The Doctor's Faith Healing
by DWDuck
Summary: The Powers That Be recognize that the First is too strong for Buffy and the gang and send for help from another power.  A sentimental, romantic blue box delivers the Lonely God to Sunnydale so he can face off with the First once again.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Doctor's Faith Healing

Author: DWDuck

Pairings: Faith and The Doctor (10th), Buffy and Spike

Rating: R to NC-17

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the rights to BtVS or Doctor Who. I'm just playing with their stuff. AU for Doctor Who.

Setting: Season 7 BtVS and Pre- Water of Mars Doctor Who

Notes: Au for Doctor Who (new companion) and eventual explicit sex.

Summary: The Powers That Be recognize that the First is too strong for Buffy and the gang and send for help from another power. A sentimental, romantic blue box delivers the Lonely God to Sunnydale so he can face off with the First once again.

**Doctor's Faith Healing**

**Prologue**

The Powers That Be took their seats around the conference table in the stark white room. They had convened a meeting to discuss the crisis at the temporal nexus point known as Earth. Their interference and then lack of assistance had led to the premature deaths (twice now) of the Slayer known a Buffy. The latest death should have been permanent, but somehow the Witch Rosenberg had gotten her hands on the spells and items necessary to mystically resurrect Buffy. Disturbingly, the ramifications of a mortal doing such a resurrection had been kept from her. Most of the items necessary for the spell had been sealed off from the reality and an investigation was being conducted as to how they had been brought back into phase with the normal Universe. The act of bringing Buffy back to life had given the other side the opening they needed to release its most powerful player, the First Evil. No one knew where the corporeal body of the First was kept, but its spirit had been released on earth to wreak chaos and destruction.

"Have you finished running the simulations?" the Spokesman asked.

"Yes we have," the Planner replied. "9,999 times out of 1,000 the Slayer and the rest of the potentials are destroyed and the First takes over the earth. From there the simulations breakdown. Simply using our forces, we can expect to regain balance in a millennium, possibly two," she said sadly.

"Time is irrelevant. We will learn from our mistakes. We gave this Slayer too much freedom," one of the Powers said.

"Time is never irrelevant," a relatively new power countered. She looked at the one who had spoken coldly. "I have recently ascended and I'm new to how you do things," she said. "Am I correct is saying that the Great Treaty says that at this point any energy we expend to help Buffy and her friends defeat this 'First Evil' will be met with equal energy from the other side?" she asked.

"That is correct. Balance must be maintained," the Spokesman said.

"What does the treaty say about outside powers interfering?" she asked.

The Spokesman paused and closed his eyes while he mentally reviewed the entire 1,896,567 page treaty drawn up by Wolfram and Hart. He opened his eyes and looked at the newest power. "The treaty specifically says that neither side can request help from an outside power, but neither can they stop a power from interfering of their own free will," he said. "I believe this was put in to allow some of Wolfram and Hart's clients access to the Earth." The Spokesman saw a gleam in the young "woman's" eyes. "Do you have something in mind?" he inquired.

"Just a moment," she said. After a pause she spoke, "I just sent a draft of a message to the Arbitrator to make sure it was free of any kind of request for service. The message has to contain only the facts of the current situation," she said. A collective gasp went up from the table at the name of the Arbitrator, the being who oversaw the conflicts of the Universe and whose judgment was final. "What? Hasn't anyone ever thought to run a draft by him first to see if it was acceptable? He seemed quite pleased at the notion. Hold a moment," she closed her eyes, "He sent back a reply. The Arbitrator agrees the message is simply a statement of current events and does not rise to the level of a request," she said smugly.

The assembled Powers That Be were shaken to the core at the audacity of their newest member. The Spokesman finally got up the nerve to ask, "What powers are you hoping will interfere on behalf of the Slayer?" He tried to think of the groups that were operating currently and they all had their plates full at the moment.

"I'll give you a hint," she said coyly, "you might recognize this description, 'He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun. He's ancient and forever... He burns at the center of time and he can see the turn of the universe... And... He's wonderful.' He also happens to be my grandfather," Susan said proudly. All noise in the conference room ceased.

The Spokesman sat in his chair numbly. "The Lonely God," he muttered softly. The paradox to end all paradoxes. A mere mortal more powerful than all of the Powers That Be combined. The Spokesman had never bothered to learn who the new member of the Powers That Be had been before she had ascended. He knew who she was now, they all did. For the first time in a cosmic age he felt awe tinged with fear. This new member in their ranks had been Susan, the granddaughter of the Doctor. She was an ascended Time Lady, and would most likely soon have his position as leader of the Powers That Be. If what she had just pulled was any indication of what was to come; things that had stayed the same for eons would be changing soon.

"But the message isn't for him. He doesn't really do well when he gets all the information up front," she admitted. "The message is for the most beautiful creature that ever existed. A beat up, old type 40 TARDIS," Susan said fondly of her home for so many years. She stood up and strode out of the room, leaving the others to either sink or swim in her wake. Once she was in the hallway, she let out a big breath of air. She didn't need to breathe, but old habits were hard to break. Susan hoped they bought it. She wasn't just worried about Buffy and the Earth. She was worried about her Grandfather. Once she had ascended, she had peeked in on him and seen the terrible pain in his soul from the loss of Rose Tyler. The fact that Rose was living a happy life with a human version of him didn't help him much. He had not allowed himself to love anyone since the death of her grandmother and the loss of Rose had shattered his heart. Susan used her enhanced Time Lady ability to look into the Vortex and see all of the possible timelines that stood in store for him. Too many of them held empty, lonely lives. Sure he had companions as he always had, but he never found love. Susan hoped that by sending to him to the Slayers (both powerful and feisty women) he might find love with one of them, love he so desperately needed.

**Chapter 1**

Buffy Summers stormed down the street towards the Bronze. "_How_ _could Faith be so irresponsible?_" she fumed. Her fellow Slayer, Faith Lehane, had taken the potential slayers for a night out on the town. "_After that freaky priest guy handed us our asses, we should be training harder, not strutting around like a cat in heat,"_ Buffy thought. She rounded the corner and walked along the back side of the large warehouse that housed the Bronze. She was so incensed she almost ran face first into the large blue box standing in the middle of the alley. Buffy looked up at the words on the lighted strip at the top. "Police Box?" she snorted. "Yeah, like that will help cut down crime." Buffy walked around the obstruction and made her way to the front of the building. She went inside, the bouncers not even bothering to check her ID.

As soon as Buffy got inside, her Slayer senses went into overdrive. She quickly scanned the room and saw the vampire population outnumbered the human population in the club. Faith and several of the potentials were doing a rather seductive dance with one of the few human groups of males in the Bronze. Buffy began shepherding the potentials who weren't on the dance floor towards Willow, Xander, and Anya. She was trying to figure out a way to contact Faith (all though the other slayer must have felt the presence of the vampires as well), when a skinny man in a blue, pin striped suit strode purposefully through the crowd towards Faith. She looked at his clothes for clues to whether or not he was a vampire. "_Nice suit with red chucks…not normal, definitely not normal_," she thought. Buffy relaxed when instead of attacking Faith from behind, he politely tapped one of the boys on the shoulder. Before the boy could say anything, he grabbed faith by the hand and spun her further onto the dance floor. "Well as long as he's in front of her, it will make it easier for her to stake him," Buffy said under her breath. She got the potentials out of the building in groups led by embarrassed Scoobies. Buffy came back to the main room and found a slow song playing and Faith dancing very, very close with the stranger. Buffy snorted in amusement at the look of terror on the guy's face.

**(Earlier that evening)**

The Doctor pulled out the hammer strapped to the underside of the console and gave the controls a good whack while trying to keep the green stabilizers steady with his foot. "Where are you taking me?" he asked in frustration of the disobedient TARDIS. "I just wanted a vacation. Maybe see Mars, but no, you decide that there is an emergency and send us tumbling through the Vortex," he complained. The TARDIS shook and he fell over into the airline seats he had installed on the railing. "Glad I put those there. Starting to bruise in my old age," he said to himself. The TARDIS shook again and tossed him off the seats onto the floor, bumping his head on the center console. "Ah, that's more like it," The Doctor said. The shuddering and shaking stopped to be replaced by the familiar "chains being pulled over gears" sound of the TARDIS materializing somewhere. The Doctor was a bit chagrinned to think that as landing went, the TARDIS did better on that one than he had on his last three. He stood up and put on his reading glasses as he looked at the readouts, trying to figure out where he was. He cast a curious glance at the time rotor. "Earth? 2003? What are we doing here?" he asked. As if to answer, a panel on the console slid open and a new sonic screwdriver rose out of it. "Ooh! You shouldn't have," The Doctor said. He quickly snatched the new tool out of the slot in case the TARDIS took him literally. A light flashed under the slot, seemingly impatient. "Oh, one to a customer, eh?" The Doctor asked. He took out his old sonic screwdriver and placed it in the slot. The tool dropped into the console and the panel slid closed. A second panel opened and a small rectangular piece of plastic popped up. The Doctor tilted his head from one side to the other as he looked at it, trying to figure out what it was for. He picked it up and the second panel slid shut.

The plastic card's sides were in the golden ratio, but the Doctor figured that probably wasn't important. The front had the Seal of Gallifrey embossed on it as well as a square hologram. There were a string of numbers and the words "The Doctor" in raised print on the front. He titled the card and saw the hologram was a small picture of the TARDIS. The back of the card had a black stripe that appeared to be some form of archaic, magnetic media. Also on the back was a phrase written in old High Gallifreyan. It read, "It's used to buy stuff with". "Oh…that's what these are for," The Doctor said. "I always wondered." The door to the outside swung open automatically, drawing his attention away from the card. The Doctor tucked the credit card away in a pocket of his jacket. Ever the curious child, The Doctor spared one glance at the time rotor and then looked out into the dark alley with a huge grin on his face. "Allons-y!"

From the lack of starlight and the pervasive smog smell, the Doctor knew he was somewhere in Southern California. Judging from the warehouses surrounding the alley, he was also in an in an industrial district. "If I'm in an industrial district, why can I hear music?" he wondered aloud. The Doctor followed the rhythmic bass beat to the front of the nearest warehouse where a bouncer was checking IDs. Fishing out the psychic paper from his jacket, the Doctor showed it to the bouncer who just waved him in. The Doctor folded the two blank pieces of paper up and put them back in his pocket. He opened the doors and his senses were assaulted by the loud music and frantic energy found inside any club Galaxy wide. Glancing around, the Doctor was able to make out a dance floor, a stage where a live band was playing, and a bar. Deciding one looked less conspicuous with a drink in hand, the Doctor headed to the bar to order a banana daiquiri, and try out his new purchasing rectangle.

The Doctor sipped his drink and glanced around the room. The music was nice. Not quite his taste, he was more of punk rocker himself, but still nice. With a band this good, there should have been a lot more people here. While looking for signs of why more people didn't patronize this particular club, the Doctor noticed a group of men standing on the cat walk staring intently at the dance floor. Their stares were anything but friendly. He followed their stares and saw they were looking at a group of attractive young human females doing some sort of a fertility rites dance off to one side. "_Jilted lovers, I suppose,"_ the Doctor thought. He let his gaze wander and found a second group of men staring with hatred at the group of young ladies. Becoming concerned, the Doctor looked harder at people ringing the dance floor and counted two other, smaller groups staring with animosity at the group of women. The Doctor was able to discern that the majority of the ill will was centered at what he took to be the leader of the girls, a lithe brunette with long hair. She was wearing a pair of tight, black jeans and a VERY tight, red tank top. The top was so tight it was obvious she was not wearing a bra underneath it, all though she apparently didn't need one. "Gravity does have its favorites_," _the Doctor chuckled. A look of surprise chased across his face at what he had just said. "I have to stop hanging out with Jack so much," the Doctor warned himself. He finished his drink and made his way to the dance floor to play the wandering knight errant once again.

Faith was blowing off steam and more importantly letting the potentials blow some off as well. She had chosen to come to the Bronze because she heard that it had become a real hangout for vampires, more so than usually. The newbies might not be ready to take on an Uber-Vamp yet, but they were all more than ready to dust some garden variety vamps. Her original plan had been to use herself, Kennedy, and a couple of the other stronger girls as bait on the dance floor. They would whip the blood suckers into a frenzy and draw them into the center. The rest of the slayer potentials would then attack from the rear. It had been good plan until she realized how many of the fang-faced shitheads there were in the place. She was busy teasing the jocks that were too stupid to leave town while trying to come up with another plan, when a tall, skinny man in a blue suit tapped one of the jocks on the shoulder.

"Excuse me, do mind if I cut in? Of course you don't. Thanks," he said quickly with a British accent. The newcomer took Faith's hand before the jock could react and took a step away. Up until then, Faith had come to associate that accent with stuffiness like Giles and Wes. This guy was the exact opposite. His voice was overflowing with bubbling energy. The big, goofy grin he gave her as he spun her away from the jocks and the potentials further smashed the British stuffy stereotype. When they were in the center of the dance floor he said, "Hello, I'm the Doctor," with infectious smile.

Faith made a quick appraisal. She thought his messy dark hair gave his sharp face boyish charm. Faith put her hand on his arm and gave it a slight squeeze. She felt well toned muscle. Faith nodded in approval. It wasn't that he was simply skinny; it was that he had a runner's build. She let her mind wander and wondered what his butt looked like. "_Guys who run a lot always have nice butts," _she thought. "Like to role-play, huh? Cool," Faith said. "I can be your patient," she said in a low, husky voice. She slid her body seductively down the front of his.

"What? What?" the Doctor stammered. Faith giggled at the genuine look of confusion on his face. "That's my name…'The Doctor'," he tried again.

Faith leaned back in surprise. "Your name is 'The Doctor?" she asked him. The Doctor nodded. He expected the whole argument over it being a title, not a name; but got, "And I thought Buffy's parents were cruel." The Doctor opened his mouth to say something and then shut it when nothing came to mind. He had no idea how to respond to that. "So Doc, just because you don't want to role-play doesn't mean we can't have a good time," Faith said. She ran her hands from his shoulders to his chest.

"Um…yes…well, you see," the Doctor gently took her hands off of his chest. A piece of his mind that he tried to keep tucked away enjoyed even this brief bit of physical contact with another person. "The reason why I came over to talk to you is that I think you are probably in a great deal of danger," he warned. The Doctor's smile never wavered, but eyes flicked back and forth from Faith to the groups of men who were staring at her in hatred.

"What makes you say that?" Faith asked. She already knew she was deep shit, but wanted to see what his take on things was.

"I noticed about 20 men circling the dance floor and they all seem to be focusing their rage on you. Why would that be?" the Doctor asked.

"Ex-boyfriends?" Faith offered. The Doctor arched an eyebrow. Faith shoved him in the shoulder. "Don't judge," she warned.

"Doesn't really matter, I suppose. What does matter is the fact that like sharks, they have been circling for a while now and soon they will strike," the Doctor said.

"So you came onto the dance floor, putting yourself in the middle of a feeding frenzy, to warn me?" Faith asked suspiciously.

The Doctor paused before answering. He gave her a child like, however somewhat maniacal grin. "Yeah, I have a habit of doing that. Isn't it great?" he said.

"_Cute and brave. Not very bright to get in the middle of a vampire ambush, but sweet," _Faith thought. "OK, here is the plan, Doc. Stay near me and I might be able to get you out of this alive. They won't attack until the music stops. Oh, and you miscounted. There are 35 of them in the club," Faith assured him.

"I thought I was saving you?" the Doctor asked confused, and somewhat put out. The song ended and was replaced by a slow one. The Doctor took Faith's right hand in his left and put his right on her waist in a very proper fashion.

Faith rolled her eyes at both his comment about saving her and his attempt at slow dancing. Faith let go of the Doctor's hand and wrapped her arms around the taller man's neck. Faith smirked at how uncomfortable this seemed to make the man who called himself the Doctor. She pulled herself close to him and inhaled his scent with her enhanced Slayer senses. "_Weird…I've never smelled a guy like this before. It's not bad…just different," _she thought. Faith rested her head on his chest and felt him tense up. "_What is wrong with this guy? Is he gay? Is he…_" her thoughts were interrupted when her hearing picked up two, distinct set of heart beats. The Doctor looked down at Faith who looked into his concerned eyes. Faith tapped out the four beat pattern unique to his species on his chest with her hand. She smiled up at him, causing some of the tension to drain from his body. "Well, at least I know you aren't a vampire," she teased him.

"Vampire?" he asked.

"Yeah, you know…blood sucking fiends with no souls…enhanced strength and fighting skills," Faith explained. "The guys you watched surrounding the dance floor…" Faith looked at him like she was trying to see a glimmer of comprehension.

The Doctor had been wondering why that one chap in the corner hadn't drawn a breath in the last 5 minutes even though he had been pacing back and forth. The Doctor tried to be nice, but old racial prejudices took over. "Those aren't real vampires," he said condescendingly.

Faith sighed deeply. She let go of the Doctor and took a step back. "If you want to live to see tomorrow you need to accept something. Vampires…are…real, and they're about to try kill everything with a soul in this place," Faith said angrily.

"Trust me. No one knows better than me that vampires are real, but this lot," the Doctor gave a broad arm movement, waving at the crowd. "This lot are not real vampires." The music ended and over half of the patrons in the club, including the bouncer, shifted their facial features to their vampire form. The nearest vampire launched itself at Faith who spun around and kneed it in the stomach as it flew by. It landed it a heap by her feet and rolled over to look at the Doctor. "What?" the Doctor yelled, affronted by the attack.

"THAT is a vampire," Faith told the Doctor. She pulled out a wooden stake she had hidden in the small of her back and plunged it into the creature's heart. The vampire exploded in a cloud of dust.

Faith prepared herself for the inevitable freak out of her recent dance partner. She was surprised when she heard him speak to the cloud of dust in a soft, sad tone of voice. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. We thought we had them all rounded up. We never imagined one of them had made it to Earth. I'm so sorry," he said, a tear sliding down his cheek. Faith watched the Doctor clench his jaw and straighten his back. He looked at her and what she saw in his eyes gave her goose bumps. She had first assumed that this guy was nothing more than some cute, geeky Watcher. Faith now saw a terrible warrior that could make even a Slayer give pause, but just for a moment. He reached into the interior of his jacket and pulled out a silver cylinder and turned so that he stood back to back with her. "Just so you know, these aren't real vampires," the Doctor insisted. He looked down at his new sonic screwdriver and focused his attention on the new settings.

While the Doctor fiddled with whatever it was that he had grabbed, Faith busied herself with keeping him and her alive. A vampire did a sloppy roundhouse kick at her head. She grabbed his ankle and then spun towards his leg, punching through his kneecap. Faith tossed the crippled vampire into a pair that was coming up on the Doctor from his left. Faith heard a loud whistle and then saw Buffy flip from the catwalk to land near her and the Doctor. "Glad you could join us, B," Faith said.

"Slay now, talk later," Buffy ordered, angrily. Buffy rolled over Faith's back to kick two vampires and then stake a third. A fourth punched her in the face. Faith was kicked in the stomach, dropping her to her knees. She spun on one hand and one knee, the other leg outstretched. The leg sweep knocked the offending vampire down. Buffy staked the downed vampire and Faith took the opportunity to get back to her feet.

"What's crawled up your butt, B?" Faith asked huffily. Buffy only glared at her while they fought a losing battle against the tide of vampires.

"_At least I got all of the potentials out of here," _Buffy thought. "_It looks like a new Slayer is going to be called real soon."_

"Someone's been holding out on information from me, again," the Doctor said as he figured out what the new settings were for. Faith and Buffy watched him scamper up onto the stage. He tapped the mic and caused a brief bit of feedback. The fighting stopped as everyone in the club looked up to see what the skinny madman was going to do. "Hello there. I heard it was open mic night and I thought I might just give it a try," he said. His smile was back in full power. "Is everyone having a good time?" the Doctor asked. The vampires in the room cheered.

"What is he doing?" Buffy whispered to Faith. Faith just shrugged her shoulders. They both looked around at the sea of undead and saw that the numbers had risen. Someone had been making phone calls.

"Glad to hear it," the Doctor replied to the cheers. His face became stern and the Slayers could feel power radiating from him. "Because I want to let you know that while I'm in town, this will probably be the last time any of you vampire half-breeds have any fun at all." The tone of the room changed. The crowd started to push towards the stage, dragging Buffy and faith along with it. "I'm guessing that most of you have never heard of me, but I suggest that you go find something really old and really evil. When you do, ask it one simple question. Ask it 'When you have nightmares, what do you dream about?'" the Doctor commanded. He glared at the crowd that had pushed right up to the stage. "I guarantee everyone of them will tell you the same thing…ME!" the Doctor shouted. He raised his sonic screwdriver above his head as the first wave of vampires rushed onto the stage. The Doctor thumbed the switch and the blue crystal in the end of the sonic screwdriver released a powerful pulse of stored full-spectrum UV light. The vampire hoard in the Bronze screamed as one and covered their smoldering faces and eyes. The Doctor jumped off the stage and grabbed a Slayer by each hand. "RUN!" he ordered.

The three of them had no problem pushing their way through the blinded vampires. Once outside, the Slayers casually moved two large dumpsters to block the entrance. The Doctor was astounded at the show of super human strength. He whipped out his sonic screwdriver again and waived it their direction. He ran his hand through his dark hair as he tried to make sense of the readings. "What?" he stammered. The readings showed that they were two perfectly healthy, NORMAL human women.

"Who's he?" Buffy demanded.

Faith looked at her lucky find. He had played hard to get when they danced, but part of her got the distinct feeling that winning this guy over would be worth it. She decided to not let Buffy in on the fact that he wasn't human just yet. Faith almost rubbed her hands in glee at how cute he looked when he was confused. He was glancing at his little silver thing and then and them. "His name is the Doctor," Faith told Buffy. "And he is coming home with us," she informed the senior Slayer.

"What?" the Doctor and Buffy said together.

Buffy paused and thought about how he had handled himself in the Bronze. At this point they could use all the allies they could find. "Ok," was all she said with a toss of her head. Faith and Buffy walked up to the Doctor and each put an arm in his.

"It's best not to argue," Faith told the Doctor with a smile as she sensed he was about to protest his abduction by two beautiful women. As they escorted an arguing Doctor down the alley, Faith slipped her arm behind him and squeezed his butt, causing him to jump. "_Oh yeah, lots of running,"_ she thought with a smile.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Doctor's Healing Faith  
Chapter 2**

The Doctor planted his feet firmly on the ground and refused to be moved. Buffy and Faith were both surprised at how strong the skinny man was. "Look, it's not that I don't mind being abducted by two lovely, young women," he said. The Doctor had a sudden image of Jack Harkness laughing in the back of his mind. "But I parked behind the building," he protested.

Buffy and Faith looked at each other. "Your call, B," Faith said, deferring to the senior Slayer.

"The Doctor can come back and get his ride in the daylight. Right now we have to get back home and do roll call. After that, you and I are going to have a talk," Buffy said ominously.

Faith did an exaggerated bow, complete with flourish. "Lay on Mac Duff," Faith quoted correctly. She had been corrected by both Giles and Wesley on far too many occasions to get it wrong.

"Now there was an odd fellow," the Doctor said, thinking aloud. "He had this strange habit of naming all of his chickens after his wife. Now that I think about it, I'm glad I left before I found out why," he muttered. The Doctor was lost in his memories, not noticing the odd looks he was receiving from the Slayers.

Faith grabbed the Doctor's arm and pulled him in the direction of Buffy's house. "Mind if I ask a few questions while we walk?" Faith asked.

"Sure, if I get to ask you some," the Doctor replied. Faith had tucked her arm through his and he seemed not to notice. The Doctor was too busy watching how the girls kept their weight balanced at all times, always prepared for an attack. "How often do you two deal with stuff like that," he asked, jerking his head back towards the Bronze.

"Couple times a night, at least," Faith said nonchalantly. "Don't you think, B?"

"I wish it was just night time anymore. I really miss the good old days when the bad guys stayed indoors during banking hours," Buffy pouted.

"You two do this professionally?" the Doctor asked. Faith was a bit surprised that she didn't hear the usual condescending tone men got when they asked them that, as if a woman shouldn't be out playing with sharp pointy things. Instead, Faith only heard curiosity for curiosity's sake in his voice.

"No…it's more of a calling than a profession," Faith told him. "A call we never had a choice in answering." The Doctor remained quiet, inviting her to continue. "B and I are the Slayers. There is supposed to be only one, but there was some confusion the first time Buffy died," Faith said.

The Doctor nodded his head in understanding. "I can relate to that," he said whole heartedly (with both of his.) "If you don't mind me asking; what exactly is a Slayer?" the Doctor inquired.

Buffy gave him another odd look. She wasn't sure what to make of this stranger. "You brag about giving ancient demons heartburn, but you've never heard of the Slayer before?" she asked incredulously.

"I never said demons," the Doctor corrected. "I said ancient evil, but if by demons you are referring to trans-dimensional aliens, well…I suppose I have dealt with a few in my time," he said. The Doctor's face took on another faraway look as he remembered past battles with creatures wanting to do harm to his favorite planet. "Anyway, what's a Slayer? What exactly do you…err…slay?" the Doctor asked. He had a difficult time getting the last word out.

"The occasional demon, but mostly vampires," Faith answered. She saw the doctor open his mouth to correct her. Faith pointed her finger at him and said, "Don't start, Skinny." The Doctor closed his mouth, but Faith was certain the twinkle in his eyes said the discussion about "real" vampires wasn't over. "A long time ago, a bunch of jerks set up a spell that made one girl a super fighting machine to stand against the darkness. When the darkness eventually killed her, the power moved on to another girl. She died and the bouncing ball moved on to the next teenage draftee," Faith said. The Doctor looked like he was getting nauseous. "Fast forward a whole lot of time and eventually B got chosen. B died when a vampire named the Master drowned her," Faith explained.

"All right, now you're just making that part up," the Doctor insisted. The odds of B's nemesis being called the Master as well were just too thin to think about.

"Nope, the Master drowned me," Buffy insisted. "My heart stopped, so technically I died. Another Slayer was chosen. The thing is; my friend Xander knew CPR. All of sudden, the World had two Slayers," she told him.

"You and Faith," the Doctor said, pointing to the two young women.

"Ehhhhhh, wrong," Faith teased. "The other Slayer was named Kendra," she said.

Buffy gave Faith a sad look. "Kendra didn't have what it takes and then Faith was called," Buffy said simply.

The Doctor looked at the two beautiful young ladies with him and his skin crawled at the thought that they had been forced into a brutal life of daily battles with monsters most of the Earth didn't know about. At that moment he decided that he would do whatever he could to help them. The Doctor knew he had to change the subject before his anger at what had been done to the girls over rode his self control.

"I know I'm in Southern California from the smell, but apart from that I haven't a clue as to where I am," the Doctor said. "So I guess my next question is; where am I, B?"

Buffy stopped in her tracks, causing the other two to stop also to avoid running into her. She turned around and gave Faith a dirty look. "It's Buffy, not 'B'," she told the Doctor.

"What is?" the Doctor asked absent mindedly.

"My name," Buffy said slowly. "It's Buffy."

"You're kidding? Your name is 'Buffy'? If you don't mind, I think I would be more comfortable just calling you 'B'," the Doctor told her.

Buffy took a menacing step towards him. "I think that would be a bad idea," she warned him.

The Doctor gave her a warm smile as he remembered another feisty, young woman with a rubbish first name. A brilliant woman he had grown to rely on completely. "Just so we are perfectly clear, you would prefer that I not call you 'B'?" the Doctor asked for clarification.

"That's right, Doctor; and if you know what's good for you, you'll remember that," Buffy warned him.

If anything, the Doctor's smile got bigger. "Right. 'B' it is," the Doctor said with finality.

Faith clapped her hands and laughed. "Rock on!" she said, nodding her head. "The Doc's got a set of brass balls on him," Faith said in admiration. Buffy glared at her.

The Doctor gave Faith a shocked look. "How did you know that? I haven't used them in ages," he said, confused. Faith covered her mouth while she laughed at the Doctor.

Even after the horrible couple of months she had been having, Buffy couldn't keep herself from laughing either. "Too much information, Doc," she said.

The Doctor shrugged his shoulders and reached into his jacket pocket that like the TARDIS was larger on the inside. He pulled out two brass spheres, and showed them to the Slayers. "Confucius gave them to me. He said I worried too much. Of course he was right, that version of me was something of a worrywart," the Doctor explained. He offered the Chinese Worry Balls to Buffy saying, "Would you like to see them?"

Buffy was still laughing and held her hands up. "No thanks, I'll pass. I'll let you keep your balls," she managed to say between snorts of laughter.

Faith scooped the Chinese Worry Balls out of the Doctor's hands and had them spinning expertly in hers. "I would never pass up a chance to handle your balls, Doc," she said with a straight face.

The Doctor smiled at Faith and watched in admiration of her manual dexterity. His smile fell when his memory of 21st century slang and idioms finally caught up with the rest of his mind. "Oh…no…You meant…I didn't mean," the Doctor stammered. His shoulders drooped and he closed his eyes, knowing how the next sentence would sound. He held out his hand. "Faith, may I have my balls back please?" the Doctor asked.

This set Buffy and Faith off into another laughing fit. Faith carefully handed the Chinese Worry Balls back to the Doctor. She couldn't resist winking at him while she did it. She gave his crotch a quick glance, intending to eventually find out if he had a regular set as well.

"Like I said earlier, B. Where are we?" the Doctor asked.

Deciding to pick her battles, Buffy let the nickname slide. It was just one more thing to add to the "Why I am Pissed Off at Faith" list. "Uh…Sunnydale," Buffy answered, looking at the Doctor like he was insane.

"Oh, so we must near the Sunnydale crater," the Doctor surmised.

"The WHAT?" both Slayers asked in unison.

"You know, the world's largest sinkhole," the Doctor provided. He watched for any sign of recognition their faces. "Oh, this can't be good," he said, shaking his head.

**Summers Residence**

Willow, Anya, and Xander had managed to get the potential slayers back to Buffy and Dawn's house safely. The streets had been empty. The Scoobies met in the kitchen away from the younger girls to discuss what had happened. They spoke in low tones.

"Man, Buffy was pissed off," Xander said through the haze of painkillers he was taking. He almost wished he was a vampire so that he wouldn't have to see the bandages over his face every time he walked by a mirror; a reminder off his lost eye. The false priest, Caleb, had put it out using a thumb.

"Well it's not like we didn't have A Slayer with us," Anya complained.

"She's right, Buffy shouldn't have blown her top like that," Willow added. She was feeling betrayed by the friend she had known since High School. In Willow's opinion, it was Buffy's poor leadership that had gotten over a third of the potentials killed and most of the others injured in some form or another in the recent battle at the vineyard. She also blamed Buffy for what had happened to Xander.

Giles walked into the kitchen, cleaning his glasses. He was deep in thought. When he finally noticed the other three in the room, he put his cloth away. "Um…hello you three," he said politely.

"What's wrong Giles?" Willow asked, not knowing if she could handle any more bad news at the moment.

"Is it bad, super bad, or Earth shattering – we are all going to end up as cosmic croutons- bad?" Xander asked wearily.

"Actually, I'm not exactly certain. I'm not even sure if it is bad at all," Giles admitted. "As you know, I've been doing reconnaissance of the city; seeing what new evils have taken up shop, as it were." Giles paused to tap his mouth with the ear piece of his glasses. "The odd thing is that while there has been plenty of new evil moving in; the really old demons, the ones who would benefit the most from the First taking over, have suddenly disappeared. They left their crypts, holes, and caves in such a hurry that most didn't even bother to pack," Giles said. "It's really quite odd."

"Oh that," Anya guffawed. "It's just something the seers said. You know those old guys, superstitious," Anya said making circles with her finger next to her ear.

"I'm sorry, 'seers' you said?" Giles asked, a bit annoyed.

Anya made a dismissive wave of her had. "Like I said it's just superstition. A couple of the seers got really freaked out last week and said the Destroyer of Worlds would be coming to town this week," she said smirking.

Giles, Willow and Xander looked at her in horror. "Sweetie, just when were you planning on telling us something called 'The Destroyer of Worlds' is stopping by for a visit?" Xander asked, barely keeping his anger in check.

"You guys, to the demon world, he's the equivalent of the boogeyman," Anya sighed. Willow shuddered as she remembered their own encounter with the real boogeyman. "Most of the younger demons don't even believe he exists," she said.

Giles sighed wearily, a habit he formed in the last months. "Considering what we have planned for tonight, I suggest we not bring this up to Buffy. She is going to have enough to deal with as it is," Giles said. The others nodded. As if mentioning her name had summoned her, the back door opened and Buffy walked into the kitchen. She was followed by Faith and then a man none of them had ever seen before. Buffy glared at the Scoobies who had accompanied Faith and the potentials to the Bronze.

"Did everybody make it back?" Asked Buffy.

"Uh yeah, everyone's accounted for, and I guess one extra now," Xander said tersely.

"Doctor, this is Willow, Anya, Xander, and someone from your homeland, Giles," Buffy said making quick introductions.

Only the two Slayers were able to pick up the softly muttered, "Doubtful," from the Doctor when Buffy mentioned Giles being from his homeland. The Doctor perked up and shook hands with each of them, flashing his crazy grin. "Nice to meet you, I'm the Doctor," he said.

"_That's odd_," thought Giles, "_He definitely has a British accent, but I can't place where it's from._" Giles decided to ask the man, "Pardon me, but where are you from?"

Knowing the truth was always easier than a lie, the doctor answered, "Gallifrey."

"Ah," Giles pondered, "Isn't that in Ireland?" The Doctor chuckled at the common error. Giles shook his head and followed Buffy and the Scoobies into the living room. Faith was about to follow, but she was stopped by the Doctor's hand on her arm. She turned to face him and saw his usual grin had been replaced by a very serious expression.

"Something isn't right here," the Doctor said. "I can feel something tugging at my subconscious, an outside force," he told Faith.

Faith gave him a grim laugh. "Welcome to Sunnyhell, home of the Hellmouth," she told him. She caught Buffy staring at her and walked into the living room to take her licks.

"_Hellmouth?_" the Doctor wondered. He closed his eyes and ran through his vast memory for any references to what a Hellmouth might be. When he found it, he wasn't happy at all. A Hellmouth was a stable, low order dimensional rift that leaked dark radiation into the nearby area. There were several scattered throughout the Universe. They became a real nuisance, however, when they formed on a temporal nexus point like Earth. If one was close to opening, the amount of dark radiation that would be pouring through would be immense. Anyone living nearby for a great length of time would end up be poisoned by the radiation.

Yelling and then a deep quiet came from the living room. The Doctor next heard a teenage girl ask Buffy to leave. He ran into the living room, put his fingers in his mouth and gave an ear piercing whistle. Everyone stopped at looked at him. Buffy stopped with her hand on the doorknob. "B, get over here, now!" the Doctor ordered. Buffy let go of the doorknob and walked to him, still in shock at the betrayal from the Scoobies and her sister.

"She's been asked to leave. This is none of your affairs," Giles said, rising out of his seat.

The Doctor pointed to him and said, "You, sit down and shut up!" Giles sat down and obeyed. His magical senses picking up flares from the tall, skinny man. The type of flares that poked out from a really powerful shield when a powerful practitioner got angry.

"Hey! Just who the hell do you think you are?" Xander demanded.

The Doctor turned to face him slowly. Willow took in a deep breath as she also felt the flares of energy coming off of the man. The Slayers basked in the warmth of the energy the Lonely God was tossing around; completely unaware he was doing it.

"Who am I? I'll tell you who I am," the Doctor said, taking a step towards Xander. He gave one look at Faith who had known he wasn't human from almost the start, before facing the group. "I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord. I'm from the planet Gallifrey in the Constellation of Kasterborous. I'm 912 years old and I'm the man who is gonna help Buffy and Faith save your lives and all 6 billion people on this planet," the Doctor said. "You got a problem with that?" he asked Xander. The Doctor was just guessing on Buffy and Faith needing to save the world; but knowing his track record, it was a pretty safe bet.

A loud thud was heard from the hallway. Dawn looked over and saw Andrew had fainted away from the most intense nerdgasm of his life. "It's just Andrew," she said. There was a collective sigh of relief and no one got up to help him.

"Now then, I just heard a group of people turn on each other when they should be standing side by side," the Doctor said. Xander started to say something, but the Doctor cut him off. "Faith, I hate to put you on the spot, but I noticed something when this argument was going on. You weren't taking sides,' he said.

"I just got back a week ago," Faith said. She chose her next words carefully. "I hadn't been around for a couple of years, so I don't think I should take sides," she said.

"Good, that fits my theory. Tell me, what do you think of both sides of the argument?" the Doctor asked, getting excited.

Faith took in a deep breath and looked at Buffy. "B made a real fuck up the other night that got some good girls killed and others hurt. She also has a stick the size of a giant redwood shoved up her ass most of the time," Faith said. She looked at the Scoobies. "But she is in charge and has risked more than any of the rest of you put together. Leaders have to make decisions and sometimes they suck, but you still follow them," she said, thinking of her time with the Mayor.

"Excellent!" the Doctor said, clapping his hands together. "Now tell me, would this group have turned on B like this, oh…I don't know…say a year ago?" he asked.

"Fuck no," Faith answered. "The Scoobies and B were so tight I always figured they held hands to pee," she taunted the Scoobies, always an outsider. Willow clenched her jaw and squinted her eyes in anger.

The Doctor noticed the byplay and stepped in between them. "Right, this all makes sense. I think you may all be suffering from dark radiation poisoning from the Hellmouth. I take it that it's opening?" he asked no one in particular. He was greeted by a sea of nods. His scientific explanation cut through to Willow's keen mind.

"Are you saying there is some sort of 'evil' radiation leaking out of the Hellmouth and we've all been exposed?" Willow asked for clarification.

"Correctamundo," the Doctor said pointing at Willow. "And the effects of long term exposure are depression and paranoia. If I'm right, the levels of exposure should be higher in B than in Faith," he guessed.

"How do you plan on measuring that?" Willow asked.

"Oh, that's easy. I just join consciousnesses with them briefly and compare their levels to a base line I have stored up here," the Doctor said, tapping the side of his head with finger.

Faith looked at Buffy and said, "I'm game if you are, B?"

Buffy just nodded her head, silent tears still streaming down her cheeks from the hurt her "family" had just inflicted. The Doctor sat down cross legged and invited Buffy to do the same across from him. Buffy did as he suggested, moving on auto-pilot.

"B, this mind to mind connection can seem somewhat intimate. If there are any memories that you don't want me to have access to, I want you to imagine a long hallway," the Doctor said. "Any memories you want to keep hidden, just put them in those rooms and shut the doors. I won't be roaming around anyway, but just in case, I will know the closed doors are off limits," he told her. "Are you ready to begin?" he asked. Buffy nodded. The Doctor raised his hands to Buffy's face and temples. They heard another thump and they both looked over to see Andrew had regained consciousness only to feint in nerd ecstasy again. The Doctor and Buffy returned to looking into each others' eyes, ignoring Andrew. The Doctor closed his eyes and made the connection.

The first thing the Doctor felt was the radiation poisoning and Buffy's will beating it back. The Doctor had never seen levels this high in a living human before. He quickly extended his mental shielding to encompass Buffy's core. He let a small tendril of the Vortex sneak out from his soul and cross the divide to Buffy's. Everywhere the whipping tendril struck, the darkness surrounding Buffy was burnt away. He held the connection as long as he dared; knowing further exposure to the Vortex could be just as deadly for a human.

Buffy was aware of the terrible weight of the dark sewage that was threatening to crush her. She knew that eventually it would crush her, but she was damned if she was going to give in and just let it. She felt a second presence with her. Strangely it was completely alien, yet she felt a kinship to it at the same time. She recognized another soul forced to become a great warrior and fight in a terrible war against their will. A golden and red glow surrounded her and then expanded outward, pushing the sewage back. Buffy dropped to her knees, free to rest for a moment.

As Buffy rested, she thought about what had just happened and her pain at being betrayed by the Scoobies and Dawn faded almost to nothing. The Doctor was right. They were all being poisoned. She had made bad decisions just like they were right now. Her love for them flared and sent a white burst of energy into the shield holding back the darkness. Buffy looked up and saw a bright whip of indiscernible color slashing at the sewage and burn it off. When the majority of the dark sludge was gone, she got an image from the Doctor saying he was going to have to withdraw and that she needed to be ready to take up her own shield again. Buffy stood with renewed energy and continued to stream her love for Dawn and the Scoobies into her shield. A much smaller yellow stream of love for the Doctor leapt from her hand to join the defense.

The Doctor opened his eyes and Looked at Buffy. "How do you feel, B," he asked.

"Excuse me," Buffy said. She stood up and walked over to Dawn. The Slayer took her sister in her arms and almost crushed her, the hug was so intense. "I love you," Buffy said. Dawn just cried.

The Doctor turned to Faith. "Ok, your turn. Let's see how much of the negative radiation you have absorbed,' he said. Faith sat down in front of the Doctor just as Buffy had. "Did you hear what I said about memories to B?" he asked her.

"Yep, anything off limits to you I shut up tight. Anything I don't mind you seeing, I leave open. Simple," Faith said.

The Doctor raised his hands to Faith's face. He gently touched her cheeks and temples. Faith let out a small sigh at his touch that only the Doctor could hear. "I should warn you; this type of contact can be somewhat intimate," the Doctor warned. The word "intimate" caused Faith to shift her mental picture from a hallway full of doors to having the Doctor in bed. "Here we go," the Doctor said. He closed his eyes and opened a mental connection with Faith Lehane. They both experienced the sensation of being transported.

The combination of the Doctor's ability to see across multiple Timestreams and a Slayer's precognitive dreams sent the pair into a possible point in their future. They were lying on the Doctor's bed in the TARDIS making love passionately to each other. The Doctor and Faith could both sense the love their future selves had for each other. The sensations and feelings became so intense, both the Doctor and Faith were hurled back into their bodies at the moment of greatest pleasure. The Doctor let his hands fall away from Faith's face. He was so shocked at what had happened that he crawled a few feet away from Faith to give them some extra separation.

Faith just sat there blinking her eyes for several seconds. Finally a huge grin came to her face. "When you said intimate, you weren't kidding, Doc," she said breathlessly.

"I…Ah…I…" the Doctor stammered. He looked around the room, embarrassed to discuss the subject in front of so many people.

"It's cool," Faith reassured him with the grin still firmly fixed on her face.

"Did you get what you needed?" Giles asked the Doctor. The Doctor blushed for the first time in almost 400 years.

"I'll say he did," Faith blurted out. The Doctor had such a panicked look on his face, Faith decided to give him some room. "I'm going to get a drink of water," she said as she rapidly got up and raced to the kitchen. Buffy followed her, worried for her sister slayer. Giles watched the odd display and then looked back at the Doctor, waiting for an answer.

The Doctor tried hard to come up with an answer that wouldn't get him tossed out of the house. Suddenly the levels of dark radiation poisoning in Faith popped to the forefront of his consciousness. "Glad some part of my brain was still on the clock," he thought. "Faith's dark radiation levels are barely readable, which I would expect considering she has only been here for a short time," the Doctor said. "B's on the other hand are extremely high. If it weren't for her extremely strong will, she would have succumbed to despair and probable suicide by now," he said. Willow covered her mouth in horror. The Doctor glanced around the room, a small smile on his face. "The corollary of that is that every one of you who has stayed with her this long also has an extremely strong will and exceptional character," he praised them. "Like me, she chooses her companions well."

Faith poured a glass of water and drank it in one gulp. She still had a grin on her face. Buffy stood next to her in the kitchen. "You OK, Faith?" Buffy asked, wondering what the Doctor had done to her.

"Absolutely awesome, B," Faith answered her. A thought crossed her mind. "Do mind if I ask you a personal question, B?" Faith asked.

"Depends on what it is," Buffy said.

"When you and the Doctor did that Vulcan mind meld thing, what happened?" Faith asked. She wondered if he had mind fucked Buffy as well.

Buffy was relieved it was something simple like that and not about her and Spike. "I felt really calm and got more rest in those ten seconds than I have in the last month," Buffy said appreciatively. "It also helped give me some perspective on what is happening with me and the Scoobies. Why, what when on during your mind meld with the good Doc?" Buffy asked. "You guys were only touching for about five seconds and now you can't stopping smiling."

Faith looked into the living room where the Doctor was explaining the dark radiation levels to the Scoobies. "Yep, pretty much the same. I guess I'm just chipper after a good rest," Faith lied. Normally she would have bragged about such great sex, but she knew somehow that the Doctor would be horribly embarrassed by it. Faith didn't want to jeopardize her chances of hooking up with him for real. She was going to have to wait until after they were already a couple, then she would brag about the great sex to anyone who would listen.

The Slayers went back into the living room and sat down on the floor. The Doctor stood up and addressed the group. "You all have a case of dark radiation poisoning, and it is affecting how you are thinking and acting. I suggest we get everyone someplace that is shielded for at least 24 hours before anyone makes any big decisions," the Doctor said. He looked around the room and saw the reluctant nods of the Scoobies and the more enthusiastic nods of the Slayers. The only one who wasn't nodding was Kennedy. The Doctor glared at her and said, "Lucky for you, you don't get a vote," he said.

"That sounds wonderful in theory Doctor, but unless you have someplace nearby in mind that we have never heard of, I'm afraid it is just a dream," Giles said disappointedly. He raised an eyebrow at the manic smile the Doctor gave him.

"Wouldn't have said it if I didn't have plan," the Doctor said. "Actually that's not true. There have plenty of times where I have said things without having a plan first, that's half the fun," the Doctor admitted. "But, this time I definitely have a plan," he said.

"I would love to hear it, Doctor," said a second Buffy dressed all in black that appeared in the living room.

"Hello," the Doctor said cheerfully. "I'm afraid that information isn't for you. So if you don't mind…" he made a dismissive wave with his hand.

The First Buffy laughed at the Doctor. "Nice try, Doctor, but I leave when I feel like, and not a moment sooner," she said. "Well, the Oncoming Storm has finally arrived at the Hellmouth," the First Buffy said. "Took you long enough," she postured.

"I had more important threats to defeat," the Doctor countered. Everyone in the room scooted back involuntarily from the two beings in the center of the room.

"Come now, Doctor. We both know you have never faced an advisory as powerful as the First Evil before," the First Buffy said.

"Oh, you again," the Doctor said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

"I don't remember meeting you Doctor, and I have a very, very long memory,' the First Buffy said. "But I can just reach in a pluck out what I need from your mind,' she threatened.

Suddenly he snapped his fingers and stared straight into the First Buffy's eyes. "Go ahead and try to mine my memories," he said excitedly. "You can't can you?" the Doctor taunted.

"Of course I can, Doctor," the First Buffy said. She glanced around the room, a smirk on her face. "You haven't told them who you really are, have you?" she asked him. The First Buffy didn't wait for a response. "You are the Doctor, otherwise known as the Oncoming Storm, or more appropriately…the Destroyer of Worlds," she said with glee.

Anya gasped in terror. Willow grabbed Kennedy's hand and Giles muttered a quick, "Good lord."

Xander leaned forward toward the two beings in the verbal sparring match and looked at the Doctor's shoes. "You're telling me the Destroyer of Worlds wears red Converse sneakers?" he asked in disbelief.

Quoting Faith from earlier, the Doctor winked at Xander and said, "Don't judge."

"Just because you know the names evil calls me, doesn't mean you can read my mind," the Doctor said. "Prove it to me, tell me about what happened the last time we met," he said.

"That's a trick question, Doctor. Like I told you, this is the first time we have come face to face," the First Buffy said sweetly.

"Wrong!" the Doctor said fiercely. He passed his hand through the insubstantial First Buffy. "You're just the consciousness of the First Evil, a projection," he said. The Doctor took an aggressive stance directly in front of the First Buffy. "Well, I have a projection for you," he smiled maliciously.

The Doctor sent out a strong burst of mental energy with one single frozen memory in it. The image was of a giant demon chained by the wrists and ankles in pit, far underground. Its flesh had been stripped away leaving just muscle and bones. It had two huge, curved horns that were chained as well. The memory showed the Doctor standing in a cave between two pedestals, each with a vase on it. The Doctor added a bit about a planet floating at the event horizon of a black hole.

The Fist Buffy stepped back in fear from the Doctor. He knew the location of its corporeal body. He had been there, even though the First couldn't remember him. The First Buffy looked at the Doctor with the most hate possible to express with human features. "Tell me how you know this!" she demanded.

"Uh…Uh…Uh… Spoilers," the Doctor said, wagging a finger. "They're no fun for anybody," the Doctor warned. The First Buffy howled with inarticulate rage and disappeared.

The Doctor turned around and smiled at the group like nothing had happened. "Like I said, I have plan, but to do it, I need B and Faith to get me back to where I parked," he explained. "I'm guessing that now that I've managed to really irk the bad guy, it will probably try really hard to kill me. I'll need both of them to get me there in one piece," the doctor said. He put his hand on Giles shoulder, instinctively trusting the judgments of the British over the Americans. "Can you keep things safe while we are gone?" he asked Giles.

Giles took out his glasses and started cleaning them, obviously stressed to the limit. 'Yes…Yes, I suppose so," he said.

"Good chap," the Doctor said. He gestured to the two Slayers, "Shall we?" Buffy and Faith had already grabbed extra stakes and a sword each.

The three of them went out the front door and back out into the night. Buffy took point, leaving Faith to guard the Doctor. Faith leaned over to the Doctor and whispered in his ear. "I just gotta know. Was it as good for you as it was for me? Because it was out-fucking-standing for me," Faith said. His second blush of the evening told her all she needed to now. He was spared the embarrassment of admitting he also needed to head back to the TARDIS to get a clean pair of boxers.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Doctor's Healing Faith  
Chapter 3**

"Can someone please tell me what the hell just happened here," Xander pleaded.

"It would appear as though Anya's imaginary 'boogeyman' was just in the living room," Giles said dryly.

"I'm still having a hard time believing that goofy guy is the Destroyer of Worlds," Xander protested. "Just look at him, that guy would be lucky to win a fight with a half-staked vamp," he said. "I don't see him taking out planets. And another thing, does anyone other than sleeping nerdy over there believe he's really an alien. He looks pretty human to me!"

Anya squeezed his hand, trying to get him to stop. She was terrified that the Doctor would learn she was an ex-demon and that Xander was her lover. Her blood ran cold at the thought of some of the things she had been told that the Destroyer of Worlds had done to those who had transgressed against him or the helpless. Xander was doing the former and as a vengeance demon, she had done plenty to the later.

"Xander, you saw how he made the First back off," Dawn pointed out.

"I saw the First back down, yeah; but I also know the First is the original liar," Xander countered. "The First probably just put on a show to make us trust him," he said.

"Xander, shut up!" Anya yelled at her lover. The living room became very quiet as everyone focused on Anya. "You don't have any idea of who you're dealing with," she sobbed. Anya was nearly in hysterics. "You haven't heard the stories the older demons tell about him. There is a reason they are afraid of him," she tried to explain. "He _earned_ the nickname 'Destroyer of Worlds'. Legend has it he was singlehandedly responsible for the complete destruction of at least two worlds and everything living thing on them. Of course one of the worlds was supposed to be populated by a mythical demon race that was bent on taking over the Universe, but he still wiped out the whole planet," Anya said, "It was called 'Scar Rose' or something like that."

"Can you tell us anymore of these stories so we might better know what we are dealing with?" Giles requested.

Anya thought for a moment, trying to come up with a good one. "I'll tell you the one about what he did to a group of demons called the Family of Blood. It's my favorite because he worked vengeance like it was an art form," she said. "The story goes that in 1913 a family of demons was hunting the Destroyer of Worlds. They thought that if they drank his blood, they would become immortal. They chased him to Earth where he had hidden. They fought and the Destroyer of Worlds won," Anya said. "The legend says he had hidden on Earth because he wanted the Family of Blood to live out their lives in peace, instead of having to be defeated by him," she said.

Anya shivered like someone had walked over her grave. "The Destroyer of Worlds imprisoned each of them separately in a fashion he thought suited them, granting them immortality, in a sense. He bound the father in unbreakable chains and left him in a cell where the same day repeats itself forever. The mother was tossed into a dimensional portal with only one opening. It doesn't lead anywhere. She was trapped forever; always traveling, but never arriving," Anya said. She looked around to make sure she had her audience's attention. "He put a stasis spell on the son and then dressed him up like a scarecrow. The son is aware, but cannot react to anything. What he did to the daughter is the creepiest though," Anya said, rubbing her hands together. "He trapped the daughter inside every mirror. Not just one, but every mirror on Earth so she could never escape," Anya said quietly.

"Good lord, Anya," Giles sighed. "Did it ever occur to your kind to wonder about how a 'superstition' managed to do something like that as recently as 1913?" he asked.

"Come on G-man, lighten up. It's just a story," Xander said. He saw the look of concern on Giles' face. "It is just a story, right?" he pleaded.

"I don't think so. I have personally experienced two of the phenomenon Anya has just attributed to the Doctor," Giles said. It was Xander's turn to look concerned. "When I was in the Watcher Academy, I was assigned a research paper on the Farringham scarecrow. The scarecrow is impervious to any type of damage, physical or magical. It also cannot be moved by any means. Since I lived close by at the time, I went to visit it. You definitely get the feeling of another presence when you stand next to it," he said. "As for the other phenomenon…"

"Bloody Mary…" Willow whispered.

"Huh?" Xander said.

Giles nodded and Willow continued. "It's the first spell most people with any talent end up performing, usually by accident," she said. "The person will do some sort of incantation in front of a mirror and summon a little girl that only appears in the glass. Non-magical people can't do it, but if you have even a hint of power, Bloody Mary will appear," Willow said.

"The incantation is irrelevant," Giles said. "What the spirit is reacting to is the magical energy put forth in the request," he said. "Even though pretty much every attempt at contacting her is done differently, everyone always says the same thing when they contact her. They feel a strong sense of evil," Giles said. "Good lord, all this time the Watchers spent trying to figure out the history behind Bloody Mary and all we had to do was ask a demon," he chuckled ruefully.

"Fine. I won't provoke the goofy looking, skinny guy," Xander promised. Xander wasn't through with throwing a temper tantrum yet. "Ok just for arguments sake, we'll say he is this Destroyer of Worlds. So how come you, Mr. Watcher, have never heard about him?" Xander challenged.

"It was clearly an oversight," Giles admitted. "One that in retrospect should have been glaringly obvious," he said.

"Huh?" Xander asked. He hadn't been expecting Giles to admit he or the Watchers had made a mistake.

"The Watcher's Council dealt daily with things that the everyday world thought to be nothing more than myths and fairytales. As you all know, most folklore and myths have a basis in real events and creatures," Giles said. The Scoobies nodded. "It never even occurred to the Council to take things a step further and investigate what the Netherworld considered to be myths and fairytales," Giles pointed out.

"SO…what you're saying is we have the Big Bad and they have the Bigger Badder?" Dawn asked her expression one of obvious discomfort.

Giles didn't want to answer that and give the pour girl even worse nightmares than she already had. Instead he focused on something that had been teasing at the outside of his consciousness. "As for the Doctor, I seem to remember hearing that name used before," Giles said.

"When? Where? Did you read it in a book?" Willow asked hopefully.

Giles took off his glasses and started cleaning them. "Actually it was pillow talk," he said.

"Are you sure you weren't just _playing_ doctor?" Xander asked. Giles didn't acknowledge that he had even heard Xander.

"What do you remember?" Willow asked hopefully.

Giles stood up, shaking his head at Willow. "Not much I'm afraid. It was a very long time ago, before I became a Watcher," Giles said. He started towards the kitchen. "I need to make a phone call to someone I haven't spoken to in quite some time," Giles said. "I hope she is willing to take my call," he said.

Giles stood alone in the kitchen and made a very long distance call to an estate near London. It rang several times and then a man answered the phone. "Hello, Bambera House," a butler said.

"Yes, hello," Giles said. "I'm sorry for calling so very early, but I'm calling from America," Giles apologized.

"Do you know what time it is here?" the butler asked, annoyed at being woken up.

"Yes I do, but I need to speak with Colonel Winifred Bambera immediately," Giles said.

"_Brigadier_ Bambera is sleeping at this hour," the butler said coldly.

"My apologies, I didn't know she had been promoted, but it is very important that I speak with her," Giles pleaded. "Tell her…tell her that Ripper needs her help in an urgent matter," he said.

There was silence on the other end of the line for a few minutes until he heard a groggy woman's voice say, "This better not be another one of Ethan and your pranks, Ripper. If it is, god help me, I will find you both and send you to a holding facility in an undisclosed location and throw away the key." Giles could tell from her voice that she was being serious.

"It's good to hear your voice as well, Winnie," Giles said politely. "I assure you this isn't a prank. However, if you still want to drop Ethan down some bottomless hole, I wouldn't object. Oh by the way, cudos on your promotion," Giles congratulated her.

"Thank you, Ripper; but it was 10 years ago," Brigadier Bambera chided him. "Make this quick. I want to get another hour of sleep before I have to get ready for work," she said.

"Yes, quite," Giles said. "I don't mean to bring up bad memories, but I need to talk about something you mentioned when we…were together," he warned her.

Giles heard the military woman's voice soften. "Ripper, it was never the time I spent with you that I had a problem with. It was the time we spent with Ethan," she told him.

"Thank you, Winnie," Giles said. "For what it's worth, you were right. He did end up stabbing me in the back. Quite literally actually, I have a rather nice scar to prove it," he said. "What I need to talk to you about is that UNIT science advisor you spoke about when you first started with them. You referred to him as the Doctor," Giles reminded her.

"Ripper, why are you asking about the Doctor?" Brigadier Bambera asked, suddenly very much awake. Giles caught the change in her tone immediately.

"I have a man here calling himself the Doctor and I need to know if I can trust him," Giles told her.

"Describe him to me," Bambera ordered.

"Um…I suppose one could describe him as tall, skinny, dark hair," Giles said. "He seems to have quite the manic personality."

"Well, that sounds like him, but we have had to deal with several people impersonating the Doctor over the years," Bambera said. She knew just the question to see if it was _HIM_. "What are you up to that has got the Doctor's attention?" she inquired.

Giles paused before answering. "My friends and I are in a very dangerous situation that quite probably will end in a very unpleasant death for all of us," he told her. "The Doctor showed up out of nowhere and jumped right into the middle of things without even a 'by your leave'," Giles said.

Bambera chuckled causing Giles to smile at long forgotten memories when he used to hear that laugh daily. "Yep, that's the Doctor all right. Ripper, you can trust this man not only with your life, but the lives of your friends as well," Bambera assured him.

All of the mirth left Bambera's voice. "Ripper, it's not hard to figure out that if you're calling me and the Doctor is with you, things are pretty bad where you are," she said. "As per UNIT Directive One, I will be putting all units on red alert," she told Giles. Giles was stunned; Bambera was activating all of the UNIT troops worldwide. "I will have strike teams ready to deploy to…" Bambera looked at a laptop her Butler had brought into her. "Ah, I see you're calling from Sunnydale, CA…the strike teams will be ready within one hour," Bambera said.

"Uh, Winnie, I don't know what to say," Giles stammered. "Except that you need to keep your troops the hell out of here!" he swore. "I don't need more people to look after and more bodies on my conscious," Giles said.

"Always the same Ripper," Brigadier Bambera sighed. "I'll keep the troops on standby, _for now_," she said, "But I need you to give the Doctor my mobile number just in case and tell him that Directive One has been put into effect," she asked of Giles. She gave him a phone number and he recited it back to her, committing it to memory.

"If you don't mind me asking (and only if you won't have to shoot me afterwards for telling me); but what exactly is UNIT Directive One?" Giles asked.

"There is a lot of legalese crap, but basically it says that when the Doctor is on Earth during any sort of crisis, _ALL_ UNIT resources are to be put at his disposal," Bambera explained.

Giles swallowed hard at the implication. The United Nations had made it their number one directive for the Unified Intelligence Taskforce to surrender control to an alien when he showed up and needed a hand. That either spoke of great deal of trust or a great deal of stupidity. He hoped it was from trust that was earned and not just the usual stupidity of politicians. "Thank you, Winnie," Giles said. "You have answered what I needed to know," he said thankfully. "I should let you go back to sleep," he said, trying to end the conversation politely. He needed to talk to the Scoobies and fill them in on what he had learned.

"Ripper," Bambera said softly. "Be careful, and remember, you can trust him. He's saved my life personally on more than one occasion," she said as she hung up. Giles hung up the kitchen phone and went back into the living room.

"SOOOO, what's the word, G-man?" Xander asked.

"My contact in England says that the Doctor can be trusted completely," Giles told the Scoobies.

"How good of a judge of character is she?" Willow asked.

"When we were dating she told me Ethan was slime and that he would betray me. So I would say she is a pretty damn good judge of character," Giles replied. He looked pointedly at Xander. "She also called me a stubborn ass at the time," Giles added.

"OK, good enough for me," Xander said.

**Vineyard**

Caleb stood next to a Bringer who was chipping away tirelessly at huge slab of granite. The rock was being extremely stubborn and they had only managed to reveal the very tip of the ancient weapon embedded in the stone. Anyone else would be furious at the slow progress, but Caleb only smiled. The extra time it was taking only made the anticipation of using the Slayer's weapon to gut the unclean whores all the more sweet. He closed his eyes as he imagined them fighting desperately to hold their steaming entrails inside after he slit their torsos open. The appearance of the First in its chosen form as Buffy drew him out of his revelry.

"How are we coming along on getting the weapon free?" the First Buffy asked.

"Slow as usual," Caleb drawled. He watched the image of Buffy begin to pace in front of the boulder. "Pardon me for asking, but you seem a bit agitated. Did everything go all right at the Slayer's house?" he asked.

The First Buffy refused to look at Caleb. "There has been a complication," she said. "Our little blonde friend has gone and picked up another stray."

"Just one more body to stack on the wood pile when where done," Caleb said confidently.

"I can't reach into his mind," the First admitted to Caleb.

Caleb's eyes grew wide in surprise. It never occurred to him that they might lose, but this new information would make the fight a little more interesting. "May I do you the honor of killing him for you?" Caleb offered.

"Tempting, but I need you to help me set up an insurance policy," the First Buffy said. She put her hand into his head. "I need you to pick up these items so we can perform a little 'resurrection' spell of our own," she said. "I checked the treaty and it falls within an exception Wolfram and Hart set up," she laughed. The First Buffy saw a hint of a frown on Caleb's face. "Oh don't pout, Caleb. Buffy is still yours, I promise. This other Dark Champion is for the other Slayer, Faith," the First explained.

"Thank you, that cheers me up a might," Caleb said. He turned around and went off in search of the supplies needed for the spell the First was going to have him perform.

Once Caleb left, the First was able to let go of its self control and show some of the fear it had been holding back. The being known as the Doctor had not only been in the Satan Pit, but he had managed to somehow erase the First's memory of the event. The First sent out a thought tendril and summoned a pack of Bringers and a Turok-Han. The First placed an image of the Slayers in their mind, finding it impossible to nail down an image of the Doctor. Every time it tried, the image shifted and a different man seemed to appear in the Firsts thoughts. They ranged in age from the young man in the Slayer's living room to an elderly man with white hair. _"No matter. The Doctor is most likely with the Slayers and will die with them,"_ the First hoped. "Find me the Slayers," she commanded the Bringers. The Bringers broke off into groups of five and went off to the most likely locations to find the Slayers.

The First looked at her lovely Turok-Han. He resembled her old friend much more than the human looking version of the vampire slave race they had created. "When the Bringers find the Slayers, I will use the Bringers to pinpoint the Doctor's location. Then I will send you, handsome. I want you to kill him in front of them. Show them that there can be no hope," she said. The First had no real expectations of the Turok-Han doing anything she said once it went into battle. It was almost a mindless killing machine. "_Oh well, _" she thought, "_If he kills a Slayer in the process, that's one less thing on my to do list. _"

**One of Sunnydale's Many Cemeteries**

"There are how many cemeteries?" the Doctor asked in disbelief.

"12, and they're always kept busy," Buffy told him.

"That's horrible," the Doctor said.

"That's life here in dear old Sunnyhell," Buffy said. "If it makes you feel any better, we have 43 churches," she said.

"Um…no, not really," the Doctor said. They had taken a short cut through one of the twelve cemeteries in an attempt to get to the Bronze quicker. The girls had been giving him a quick rundown about the history and lay out of the town. "So did you both grow up here?" the Doctor asked.

Faith gave him a weary laugh. "B is from LA. Her mom drug her here thinking it would be a nice quiet place to live after B burned down her previous High School," Faith said. Buffy shot her a look over her shoulder and kept walking, looking out for potential danger. "Turns out living on a Hellmouth isn't as restful as she had hoped," Faith said sarcastically.

The Doctor gave Buffy a curious look. "Why did you burn down your school?" he asked.

Buffy sighed. She wished she had a dollar every time someone asked her that. At least this time she could tell the truth. "It was a school dance and the gym was full of vampires. It was the only way to kill them and save the rest of the students who hadn't all ready been killed," Buffy said.

The Doctor saw the defensive look on Buffy's face. He hurried forward to walk next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm not judging you at all. I've done it lots of times, burning down schools of one sort or another I mean," the Doctor said. "All though the last one sort of blew up due to a cooking oil explosion, so I'm not sure if that one counts," he said.

Faith snorted in amusement. "B, maybe you two should exchange recipes," she said. The Doctor looked over his shoulder at Faith, a question in his eyes. "B blew up her High School here on graduation day," she told him.

"Giant student eating snake. What was your excuse?" Buffy asked.

"Giant space bats who wanted to rewrite the source code for the Universe," the Doctor replied.

"You win," Buffy said. The Doctor slowed his pace and walked next to Faith again. He had done so unconsciously and didn't notice the small smile Faith gave him. The smile quickly faded when the Slayers heard a twig snap behind one of the crypts. "Show time," Buffy said.

A male vampire dressed in a 70's era suit walked out from behind the crypt. "I was just thinking to myself, 'boy am I hungry' and what should walk by, but a scrumptious three course meal," the vampire said. He looked the Doctor up and down. "Ok, a two and half course meal, but any way, I just want to say thanks for dropping…"

Buffy stepped into the moonlight so the vampire could get a better look at her. Faith did the same. "Oh, crap!" the vampire swore. "Sorry, Buffy. If I had known it was you and Faith I would have ran like Spike from a paisley shirt," he said. Faith spun her sword around in a lazy circle eight about her body. "Common you guys, pickings have been slim since most of the humans have left town. I must have been delirious with hunger, give me a break," he pleaded. Buffy flung her sword so it stuck into the crypt door behind him, cutting off his escape. Faith started to walk slowly towards him, still spinning her sword. "Shit!" the vampire yelled.

"Stop it!" the Doctor commanded. Faith and Buffy both froze.

The vampire froze as well, too stunned by the skinny man's ability to command a Slayer to run away. "Thanks man," the vampire said.

"I'm sorry for what has happened to you," the Doctor told him. "If there was any way to reverse it, I would; but our scientists spent centuries working on that problem and never found a cure." The Doctor turned a scornful eye on the Slayers. "You don't need to play with him. Be merciful and make it quick," he ordered sternly. Faith nodded once and moved quickly towards the vampire. The vampire looked at the Doctor like he had betrayed him. That look was frozen in the Doctor's mind as the head turned to dust when Faith's sword separated it from the rest of the vampire's body.

More twigs snapped and the Slayers pulled in tighter, forcing the Doctor towards the crypt. "Oh now what?" the Doctor complained. Five Bringers came in slowly from all different directions. "That's new," the Doctor said happily, pulling out his "brainy specs". The Doctor had seen many things in his travels and coming across a new species was always a joy. The creatures advancing on him were humanoids dressed in brown robes. Where their eyes should have been was skin flaps with rune like marks over them. The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and scanned the area. "Oh dear, you're not supposed to be here," he told the Bringers. "They are giving off trans-dimensional energy," the Doctor explained to no one in particular. "They aren't from this dimension at all," he said.

Buffy and Faith both rolled their eyes. "Most demons aren't, Doc," Faith said. A Bringer lunged at her with his curved dagger only to have his hand removed above the wrist by her sword. Faith spun on her left foot and did a side kick with her right to the injured Bringers stomach. It doubled over from the blow. Faith brought the pommel of her sword down hard onto the base of the Bringers skull, crushing its spinal column and removing it from the fight.

While Buffy and Faith were occupied with the other Bringers, one of them attacked the Doctor with its curved dagger. It lunged at him and the Doctor was able to dodge to the left to avoid being hit. "Oi, watch where you stick thing, you could really hurt someone you know," he chided the demon. The Bringer pulled his dagger out of the crypt door and spun to face the Doctor again. "I'm warning you one last time, put that thing down before someone has a really nasty accident," the Doctor said as he reached into his jacket pocket. The Bringer made no noise and only moved to attack the Doctor again. The Doctor pulled out his set of brass Chinese Worry balls and tossed one directly in front of the oncoming Bringer. The Bringer stepped on the ball which slipped out from underneath its foot, causing the Bringer to topple forward. The Doctor pushed the Bringer onto its back with his foot and saw the knife sticking out of its lifeless chest. "Told you," he said with a tight lipped smile.

Two of the Bringers took on Buffy at the same time. They slowly circled her until finally they attacked in unison. Buffy pivoted on the ball of her right foot and struck out with left foot in a roundhouse kick to the first Bringer's head. The Second Bringer punched her in the stomach, pushing her backwards several feet. This gave Buffy enough room to swing her sword, which she did in a low arc. The second Bringer stumbled as his left shin slipped out from underneath the rest of his body. Buffy followed up with a front kick to the Bringer's face, knocking it onto its back. The first bringer lunged at Buffy with his dagger while her attention was focused on his partner. His dagger was knocked out of his hand by a shiny brass ball that was thrown with the expert precision learned from centuries of Cricket practice. Buffy looked over and ran her sword through the weaponless bringer and then through the one laying on the ground. Movement caught her eye and she saw a Bringer trying to sneak up on Faith from the rear. Buffy picked up the brass orb lying at her feet. "On second thought, Doc, I think I might just play with your balls after all," Buffy said. She threw the Chinese Worry ball with such force that it lodged completely in the Bringer's mouth and knocked its head back. This drew Faith's attention and she spun around, impaling the demon with her sword.

The Doctor and Buffy joined Faith who was looking at the dead Bringer with the Doctor's Chinese Worry ball stuck in its mouth. She gave the Doctor a wicked grin and said, "That's some serious teabagging going on there, Doc."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "I threw it. You want me to dig out?" she asked the Doctor.

"No, that's quite all right," the Doctor said a bit squeamishly.

Faith came up behind the Doctor and patted him on the back. "Don't worry. I'm sure I can find you something else to play with that will ease your tension," she said in a sexy voice. Faith let her hand drop to his butt before turning to follow Buffy. She squeezed again, causing him to jump and turn around almost completely in the air. The Doctor gave her a disapproving look and hurried after Buffy.

The Slayers and the Time Lord made it back to the Bronze without encountering any more resistance. The dumpsters they had moved against the doors to the club had been shoved aside and from the silence inside it seemed the vampire hoard had dispersed. The Doctor sprinted ahead to the rear alley where his precious blue Police Box was sitting. When he rounded the corner, he found a different breed of half-vampire that he had yet to encounter blocking his way.

"We're getting warmer," the Doctor said cheerfully. "At least this one looks similar to a real vampire," he told Buffy and Faith as they came around the corner behind him.

"Oh shit, an Uber-vamp!" Faith swore. She ran past the Doctor, knocking him out of the way. Faith had managed to get him out of the way just before the creature's razor sharp claws sliced through the air where his neck had been. She lunged at the Turok-Han with her sword and the Uber-vamp swatted the blade aside contemptuously. It followed up with a backhand swing that knocked faith into the side of a nearby building, stunning her.

Buffy ran past the Doctor on his other side to gain momentum. She jumped onto the closest wall and launched herself at an oblique angle to the grotesque vampire. The Turok-Han used its supernatural speed to turn and catch Buffy by the throat, one handed. The Doctor was amazed she hadn't broken her neck. All though considering how hard the creature was squeezing, that wouldn't be an issue much longer. The Doctor decided on a gamble based on how closely the creature's face resembled a true vampire.

The Doctor rushed over to where Faith's sword had fallen and ran his palm across the blade, drawing blood. He held up his hand a single drop of blood fell to the ground. The Turok-Han stopped squeezing Buffy's neck and sniffed the air. "That's right," the Doctor said encouragingly. "Smell the blood of your creator's ancestral enemies," he said. "You know you want it," the Doctor taunted. He squeezed his hand and another drop fell to the ground.

The Turok-Han smelled the blood of the hunters and its genetic coding overrode everything else. It tossed Buffy aside and let out a feral growl. With a snarl of rage it leapt on the Doctor, knocking him to the ground. The Turok-Han wrapped both hands around his throat, and slowly choked the life out the Doctor.

Faith had regained consciousness and had seen what the Doctor had done to save Buffy's life. The Doctor turned his head and gave her a look that could only be interpreted as "Will you mind terribly killing this thing, please?" Faith used the wall of the building to stand. She walked over and picked up the sword that was now stained with the Doctor's blood. Faith sidestepped next to the Doctor's head so she good get a good upward swing and not risk killing the Doctor as well. The Turok-Han's head bounced off the wall before it turned into dust along with the rest of the body. The Doctor made the mistake of trying to breathe at the same time and got a mouthful of vampire dust.

"Blech! That's disgusting," the Doctor said. "It's worse than Mickey's cooking," he said. Buffy struggled to her feet and rubbed her throat.

Faith held out her hand to help the Doctor up. When he took it and she pulled him to his feet, she felt the warm stickiness of the blood on his palm. "That's my Doc," Faith praised him. "Big brass balls, all the way," she said.

Faith looked around the alley and saw only the odd looking, blue box. "I hate to tell you this, Doc, but it looks like someone stole your ride," she said, brushing vampire dust off the front of his suit. In response the Doctor just smiled at her and pulled out a shiny gold key from his jacket. He walked up to the box, unlocked the door, and went inside.

Faith and Buffy stared at each other for a moment. Buffy shook her head. "_I guess the Doctor cracked under that much fighting. Can't say I blame him, _" Buffy thought. She jerked her head towards the box in the middle of the alley. "He's your stray, you go get him," Buffy said, still rubbing her sore throat. Faith nodded and went in after the Doctor.

Faith walked into the box with her arm extended, expecting to be able to grab the doctor immediately. The problem was he was a good 25 feet in front of her. She was standing inside a round room that was decorated with the merging of the organic and the mechanical. The overall color scheme was a brownish gold. In the very center of the room was a glowing column of light that pulsed like it was alive. The Doctor was leaning against what looked like controls that wrapped around the base of the light column.

Faith backed out of the TARDIS into the alley far enough so that she could lean to each side and see around the blue box. Faith's face broke out into a huge grin as she walked back inside the TARDIS. She looked at the Doctor and saw he was smiling as yelled back into the alley, "Fuck-an-A, B! You have got to see this!" Faith ran up the catwalk to join the Doctor. Without thinking, she put her arm through his and turned to watch Buffy's expression when she walked through the door.

Buffy walked through the doors and took a slow look around the control room. She nodded her head appreciatively and walked up the cat walk to the Doctor, who was thoroughly put out by her lack of reaction. Faith saw his downcast expression. "Don't mind her. She gets around," Faith said.

"Excuse me!" Buffy said, stopping suddenly. "I'm not the one who'll do anything with two legs, a dick, and a heartbeat," Buffy said.

"At least the guys I screw have heart beats, eh B?" Faith countered. Buffy raised a fist shoulder height, ready to strike. Faith paused a beat before speaking again. "You walked right into that one, B. Try not to make it so easy next time," she said. Faith softened her words with a sisterly smile.

Both girls heard a loud whoosh as the Doctor let out the breath he had been holding. He had no desire to watch a catfight between two Slayers, especially inside the TARDIS. "There's a lot of delicate equipment in here," he explained. Buffy walked over and held up the hammer that was dangling from a chain fixed to the underside of the control console. "And none of it happens to be on _that_ side of the console," the Doctor said, backpedalling.


	4. Chapter 4

**The Doctor's Faith Healing  
Chapter 4**

Buffy looked around the large control room and tried to estimate the space required for the potentials and the Scoobies to bunk down for the night. If they didn't mind being close, they should all be able to find rack space on the floor. "I think we'll all fit," she said aloud.

The Doctor looked up from some controls he had been tinkering with and smacked his forehead with his palm. "I'm getting forgetful in my old age. Sorry, B," he apologized. "How many bedrooms are you going need?" he asked.

"How many do you have?" Faith wondered, noticing the second set of doors opposite the ones they came in for the first time.

"That depends entirely on how many you need," the Doctor said like that explained everything.

Buffy looked upwards and counted off using her fingers. "We have ten potentials, two Slayers, Dawn, and the Scoobies which include Willow, Xander, Giles and Anya," Buffy said. She was silent for a moment while she examined her feelings for a certain bleached blonde vampire. "Plus Spike," Buffy added.

"Don't forget Andrew the Geek," Faith reminded her.

Buffy sighed. "And Andrew," she said.

"All righty," the Doctor said flipping levers and spinning dials. "How many rooms should have a king sized bed? I'm assuming Willow and Kennedy will be sharing a room?" he asked. Faith grinned at Buffy's uncomfortable look. "And considering how close that ponce Xander was sitting to Anyanka; they'll be wanting to share a room as well I suppose?" the Doctor surmised.

"Yeah, both teams will be wanting to make loud, wild monkey love all night, so if you have sound proof rooms, put them in there," Faith recommended.

Buffy caught the use of Anya's demon name. "What did you call Anya?" she asked the Doctor.

The Doctor smiled at Buffy. "Anyanka of course. It's wonderful to see her fighting on the side of good finally. She is doing a marvelous job posing as a human, by the way. If I hadn't seen her in action a long time ago, I would be convinced she was human," the Doctor said. "She probably doesn't recognize me though. I had frizzy hair then and wore this impossibly long scarf," he said with a wink. The Doctor put in the last variables and asked the TARDIS to create the correct number of bedrooms (and soundproof all of them - just in case.)

Faith and Buffy were startled to hear that the Doctor had met Anya before. They were also blown away finding out that he knew she was a vengeance demon and was willing to give her a second chance. Buffy asked the obvious question, "When did you meet Anya before?"

The Doctor tapped his chin and made clucking noises, trying to remember. Accessing things all the way back to 4's memories was tough some times. "It was 1880, I seem to recall. We were in London, and met at a poetry reading I think," the Doctor said. "Anyanka immediately recognized I wasn't human and spent the better part of two days trying to get me into bed. It was awful," he shuddered. "When I refused her for the last time, she went around London trying to get women to wish horrible things upon me," he said, chuckling at the memory. "Anyanka wasted her time. Whenever she got a woman to make the wish, nothing happened."

"How come?" Faith asked, curious as to how the Doctor could be immune to Anya's magic.

"As I understand it, Anyanka's 'magic' works by either distorting the temporal or probability events surrounding her victims," the Doctor explained. "Since I exist outside of Time and Space as a self contained paradox, her magics were unable to reach outside of the physical Universe to affect me," he lectured.

Faith held her hand flat above her head and moved it backwards, making a whoosh noise with her mouth. Buffy nodded her head in agreement. "How about we have you tell that one to Willow and she can dumb it down for us," Buffy suggested. The Doctor gave her a disapproving look at belittling herself and Faith.

Wanting to change the subject and save herself a headache, Faith asked, "So Doc, how do we get your phone booth back to Buffy's house?"

"She's called the TARDIS, not a phone booth," the Doctor corrected her.

"TARDIS?…and he made fun of my name," Buffy said sarcastically.

"It stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In space," the Doctor explained while he walked around the center console spinning handles, pumping levers, and hitting keys. "You are inside a living, pocket Universe. She is called the TARDIS. She just happens to _like_ posing as a 1963 Police Call Box. Every time I get her chameleon circuit fixed, she fries it so she can keep the old blue exterior," the Doctor said. "I think the old girl's a bit vain," he whispered to Buffy and Faith. The center column changed color briefly to let him know she heard him. The Doctor winked at Faith, letting her in on the fact the teasing was an old game and all in good fun.

The Doctor turned back to the console and flipped one last switch. The center column of light rose and fell in time with a sound like chains being drug over gears. The TARDIS did this three times. When it was over, the Doctor closed some switches as he ran around the console.

"Ok, we're here," he said to the Slayers.

"Huh?" Buffy said, not understanding.

The Doctor pushed one last plunger and the front doors opened. He gestured for the two girls to go outside.

The vampire known as Spike sat on the front porch of Buffy's house drinking an expensive bottle of brandy he had looted from one of the abandoned houses in the neighborhood. He had come outside so he wouldn't risk tearing the heads of the Scoobies and shoving them up random arses. He couldn't believe they had been ready to throw Buffy out of her own house, after everything she had done for them. If hadn't been for the fact that some guy calling himself the Doctor had shown up and set them straight; Spike wasn't sure his new soul would have been enough to keep him from killing the lot of them, except for the Niblet. He had promised Buffy he would take care of Dawn and killing the ungrateful little bint would be going back on a promise to the woman he loved.

Spike took another long swig from the bottle and heard a strange noise coming from the backyard. It sounded like a grinding/sliding noise followed by a loud thump. He heard the noise three times and then everything went silent. Curious, Spike got up and walked around the side of the house and opened the gate to the backyard. Standing in the middle of Buffy's backyard was a blue Police Call Box like the ones used in London during the 60s. Spike was certain that it hadn't been there when he left for the monastery 24 hours ago. He looked down at the bottle in his hand and smiled. "_This_ is a good brandy," Spike said, impressed with the liquor. He took another long drink; but spit it out when the door to the box opened and Buffy, Faith, and a skinny man wearing a brown striped suit all walked out of it like a clown car.

Buffy looked around her backyard and thought that this was definitely the way to travel. She saw Spike standing at the gate with a slack expression and a bottle of booze in his hand. Free of the mental sludge that the First had been layering on her, Buffy was able to see Spike for what he truly was. She walked over to him purposefully, took his head in her hands, and kissed him soundly. Spike blinked several times and looked down at the bottle in his hand. "This is _**really**_ good brandy. These are the best hallucinations I have ever had," he said cheerfully.

Buffy slapped Spike across the face, knowing it wouldn't hurt him for very long. "Snap out of it, Spike!" she ordered. Buffy took the bottle out of his hand and poured the remaining liquid onto the ground.

"Hey…hey…that's a sin in Ireland you know," Spike protested.

Buffy put the empty bottle down on the back steps. She backhanded Spike across the face again. "Did that feel like a hallucination?" she asked him.

"No," Spike said rubbing his jaw. Spike began to wonder that if he had sobered up, why he was still seeing a call box in the back yard.

"How about this?" Buffy asked, stepping on his foot, hard.

"Ouch!" Spike yelled.

"Do you still think you are hallucinating?" Buffy asked him.

"No, you've gone and sobered me up from a really great one," he complained.

"Good! So if you're not hallucinating then this must be real," Buffy said. Spike tensed up for another blow, but felt Buffy's arms wrap around him and her lips press against his. Her tongue slid along his lips, asking for entry into his mouth. Spike opened his mouth and Buffy kissed him with more passion than he could ever remember. Buffy broke off the kiss and whispered in his ear, "We'll talk about this later. I understand a lot more now."

Buffy took a step back and looked over her shoulder at a smirking Faith and a beaming Doctor. He had grabbed a brown duster from somewhere and tossed it over his brown suit. "I guess I should make introductions," Buffy said. She stepped next to Spike and took his hand, not caring who saw. Spike looked at their hands and nearly died again from the shock. "Spike, I would like you meet the Doctor. Doctor, this is Spike, a vampire with a soul," Buffy said.

"A what?" the Doctor asked, his voice sliding higher. "How? That's not possible. We spent centuries trying to find a cure," he blustered.

"I won it back," Spike said defensively. "I fought for it at the demon trials. I made it through and was granted one wish. I wished for my soul back."

"I'm sorry, it's just that I'm having a hard time believing you," the Doctor said. "My race focused everything we could on erasing the damage the Vampires had done and we couldn't manage. You're telling me a single individual managed to do it where an entire highly advanced race failed?" the Doctor asked. He paused for a moment before going on. "Well now that I hear myself say it, it does sound a lot more plausible," he said with a shrug.

"Doc, can't you just mind meld with him and verify he has a soul?" Buffy asked.

"No I can't," the Doctor said. "The residual Vampire DNA in him would react like a time bomb and destroy us both, but I think I know another way," he said. The Doctor held out his injured hand and unwrapped the bandage. He made a fist so some fresh blood would flow into his palm. The Doctor walked towards Spike and held out his hand, right in front of the vampire.

Spike was confused about what the skinny guy was doing until he smelled the blood. The man wasn't human it the slightest. He was one of the hated hunters. Spike closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to clear his mind of the thoughts that weren't his. His vampire instincts screamed that he had to destroy this affront to his kind. Spike ground those thoughts under his heal. He was a man first, vampire second. When he regained full control of himself, he felt oddly more in control of his vampire self than ever before. Spike opened his eyes and looked at the Doctor who had a concerned look on his face. "What the hell is a hunter?" Spike asked him.

Spike was nearly knocked over by the hug the Doctor gave him. The Doctor let go and said, "You know what you are? You're beautiful, Spike; that's what you are. Simply beautiful and brilliant. Brilliant, beautiful Spike is what I'll call you. All though I'll probably just shorten it down to Spike to save time," the Doctor rambled. "Leave it to the humans to come through again where we failed. I should stop being surprised at this," the Doctor smiled, shaking his head in amusement and wonder. He looked at Buffy. "Don't let this one get away. He's special beyond anything you can imagine," he told her. Buffy tightened her grip on Spike's hand in response. The Doctor smiled at them again and went inside.

Spike just stood there for a moment trying to take everything in. He pointed at where the Doctor had just gone. "Where did you find the anti-Giles?" he asked, smiling. "And we get to keep him, right?" Spike asked desperately. Buffy led him into the house leaving Faith to keep watch over the TARDIS.

Faith was leaning against the TARDIS thinking deliciously naughty, and yet at the same time frighteningly relationship like minded thoughts about the Doctor. There was something about this crazy alien that made her want to spend more than a one night stand with him. She couldn't see the Time Rotor in the center column change colors briefly in approval. Faith felt a tingling sensation flash through her head and then it was gone. She shook her head to clear it and happened to look down at the small patch of garden Joyce had tried to keep up. Joyce had put a small rock in the center with a phrase written on it in Latin. Faith wondered why Buffy had changed it. In its place was an identical rock with English instead of Latin. The rock wasn't just similar, it was _identical_ except for the English writing. The odd thing was she had thought about asking Willow what the phrase meant just the other day. Faith read the inscription and smiled at Joyce's foresight:  
"Lord, send your guardian to protect this house and all who dwell here"

The Doctor walked into the living room and found the Scoobies still sitting there discussing things. A few of the potentials had come up and joined them. The rest of the potentials were cleaning out the kitchen like only teenagers can do. The Doctor clapped his hands and said, "Hello everyone, we're back."

"Did you get what you needed?" Giles asked.

"Yep," the Doctor said happily. "I need everyone to pack up their things so we can move them over," he said jerking his thumb towards the backyard. "Oh, and tell everybody to pack a swimsuit. My pool is lovely and it's open to anyone who would care to take a dip," he said.

"OK, no way…" Buffy said. "You're telling me you have a swimming pool as well?" she asked, still trying to comprehend what the TARDIS actually was.

"Of course I do," the Doctor replied. "It's right next to the library," he said.

Giles perked up like an eager schoolboy. "I'm sorry, did you say library?" he asked. Xander rolled his eyes and Buffy laughed.

"Oh yes," the Doctor said using a deep bragging voice. "One of the best this side of the Great Library. I just love the smell of books, don't you?" he asked.

Giles wasn't certain what the "Great Library" was, but the prospect of visiting a library owned by an alien was tremendously exciting. "Watch out Doctor, tell him your library has a tea machine in it, and G-man just might turn gay for you," Xander teased. Giles gave Xander his usual disapproving glare.

"Of course it has a tea machine in it," the Doctor said. "What good library doesn't?" he wondered aloud, genuinely confused.

"How long will it take us to reach your place?" Giles asked, barely containing his excitement.

The Doctor leaned backwards, looking out the back door which was still open. Faith waved at him. "Oh, about 20 seconds I would say," he said. Giles frowned and was about to ask the Doctor to explain when the Doctor spoke first. "Where is the excitable little blonde fellow who is prone to feinting spells?" he asked.

"You must mean Andrew," Giles told him. "When he recovered, he wouldn't stop rambling about how aliens had finally made contact, so we locked him in a closet. Not to worry, we do it quite frequently. He should be used to it by now," he said. "We'll let him out while everyone else is packing."

The Doctor wasn't sure about locking up someone for being excitable, but he would go along for now. "All right then, let's get moving, shall we," he suggested, clapping his hands once again. Everyone rose and started moving off towards the rooms where they had been staying. Anya was one of the last ones to leave and the Doctor put his hand out to stop her. "Not you, Anyanka," he said. Anya went white with terror. "I just wanted to tell you how proud I am of how far you have come since we last met," the Doctor told her. "I would never had guessed that I would find you standing by a group of humans as they faced near certain death. Good for you," he said smiling and punched her affectionately in the shoulder.

Anya let out a huge breath. "I was scared you would smite me like you did with the 'Da'licks'," she admitted. The Doctor was amused at the way the name of his most hated enemies had been slaughtered by the demons. "I gotta ask. When did we last meet? I don't remember and I'm pretty sure a skinny, manic guy with messy hair like you yours would stick out," she said. She closed her eyes and mentally cursed herself for her bad habit of speaking before running it through a filter first.

"1880," The Doctor said, "You probably don't recognize me because I was a different person back then. Frizzy hair…bad teeth…scarf…" he prompted her.

"Oh shit," Anya said quietly, drawing out the last word. "Listen, I'm _really_ sorry for all the things I tried to do to you," she apologized. Her face took on another horrified look. "Please don't tell anybody about the other thing, they don't know," she pleaded.

The Doctor scrunched up his eyebrows trying to figure out what she was talking about. His eyebrows flew up in shock when he jumped to the implausible conclusion. He turned around and looked in the kitchen where Spike was standing close to Buffy who was supervising the potentials moving their stuff to the TARDIS.

"I thought he looked familiar," the Doctor whispered to Anya. "He's William Pratt, isn't he?" he asked rhetorically. Anya nodded. "What you did was horrible," the Doctor said angrily. "He was a renowned poet, the toast of Europe until you took sides with that greedy woman who he refused to sign a copy of a book for," the Doctor glared at her. "I felt the change you caused and know about both timelines," he said. "The only reason I couldn't change things back was because I was there when it happened. I can't cross my own timeline unless it is a cosmic emergency," the Doctor said.

"I said I was sorry," Anya said again, this time with a little more force. "Look, Spike and the others don't know. Think of it like this. I was on like a 1,000 year PMS rampage. Besides, if I hadn't worked my mojo on William, Buffy and Spike would have never met," she said, trying to defend her actions.

The Doctor looked back through the timestream and saw what events Spike had been responsible for and how important he was to this particular timeline. "I suppose you're right, and what is past is past," the Doctor said. His frown disappeared to be replaced by his usual smile. "Anyway, glad to have you on the team," he said. The Doctor walked away and went back to keep Faith company.

The Doctor took Faith back into the TARDIS and showed her the hallway where the extra bedrooms had been created. Each door was a different color or had a different type of door frame. The Doctor told Faith he had gone ahead and put king sized beds in all of the rooms just in case. He didn't tell her he had spent enough time with his best friend to know hook ups between humans could happen at the drop of a hat, or just about any other piece of clothing for that matter.

"So where's your room," Faith asked, trying to sound innocent.

"In a different part of the TARDIS," the Doctor said obliquely.

"What if something happens and we need to get a hold of you during the night?" Faith asked, putting her hands behind her back and rocking on her heels. She was well aware that she was thrusting her chest out at the same time.

"If you need me, I'll either be in the library, which is down that hall," The Doctor pointed down a hall to their left, "Or I'll be in the control room. I don't need sleep like humans do."

"Oh," Faith said, disappointed.

"But I have been known to take taps on occasion," the Doctor said, glad to see the smile that came back on Faith's face. "_Now where did that come from? That almost sounded like I was flirting with her,_" the Doctor thought.

"I'll go get the others," Faith said. As she went past him, she purposefully brushed her chest across his. The second smile she gave him was anything but innocent. The Doctor gulped and turned to follow her, wondering (not for the first time) why he kept getting mixed up with humans.

Faith went outside with a huge grin on her face. The Doctor almost flirted with her. Her grin slipped however when she found the first person ready to move in was Andrew (he had few clothes, being a prisoner and all.) He looked like he was going to cry as he walked around the TARDIS. "Where are the thrusters…the laser turrets…the loading ramp?" Andrew said in desperation. "What a piece of junk!" he swore as he walked through the front doors. His eyes grew huge however as he took in the splendor of the control room. The golden support beams and metal catwalks called out to him in their sci-fi splendor.

"She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, Andrew," the Doctor said, not realizing he was quoting a holy movie and thereby sealing his fate with the nerdling.

Andrew realized what he said as he had entered the TARDIS and what the Doctor's reply of the holy litany had been. He took in a deep breath and began to weep tears of joy. "You're my Han Solo," he sobbed and ran to embrace the Doctor. He wrapped his arms around the alien, put his head on the Doctor's chest, and said, "Take me with you when you leave. I want to visit the Cloud City or Hoth and outrun the Imperials with you. I can be your Luke Skywalker."

The Doctor looked over at Faith, confused and not just a little disturbed. "What was that Giles was saying about a closet?" he asked Faith.

Faith grabbed Andrew by the collar of his shirt and drug him to the hallway. The Doctor held his hands away from his body and shuddered, "Eeewww!" Sounds from the main doors made him turn around and focus on the next arrivals. Buffy and Spike were coming in. Buffy walked in, but Spike acted like he had just run into a solid wall.

"I take it you live here?" Spike asked the Doctor.

"Err, yes," the Doctor said, not understanding what Spike was trying to get at.

"You have to invite him in," Buffy said.

"Oh," the Doctor said wondering what had caused this particular mutation of the vampire genome. "Spike, please come inside," the Doctor said. Spike tried to walk in, but was still met with a wall of resistance.

"Oi, what gives?" Spike said, sounding annoyed.

The Doctor looked at the Time Rotor and put his hands on his hips. "This is no time for racial prejudices," he told the TARDIS. "I know you have the entire records of the wars stored in you, but Spike is different. While still one of the slave race, he decided he wanted his soul back and fought to get it. He won and has free will once again," the Doctor explained to the TARDIS.

Spike fell through the suddenly open door way and he stumbled into the control room. The lights in the control room and the center console dimmed significantly. "Oh now what?" Spike asked, irritated.

The Doctor walked over and put his hand on Spike's shoulder. "She's bowing to you," he whispered in awe. "I've heard of a TARDIS doing it in legends, but I've never actually seen one do it before," he said. The lights came back up. The Doctor clapped Spike on the back, who was looking very self-conscious. "Faith, would you mind taking Buffy and Spike back to their room?" he asked. No one corrected him his assumption they would be sharing a room as well.

Willow and Kennedy were the next to enter the TARDIS. Kennedy was trying hard to look jaded, but she was just managing not to completely freak out. Willow on the other hand was beaming like a kid in a candy store. She ran up to the Doctor, her curious mind afire with questions. "How?" was what she managed to blurt out from the mass of inquiries demanding to be first out of her mouth. The Doctor just smiled and waited for her to get her thoughts in order. "What I mean is how did you manage to pull this off? I don't feel any kind of magic at all," Willow asked him.

The Doctor ran through the same explanation he gave Buffy and Faith. Willow followed along well and asked questions showing that she was tracking right along with him. When he was done Willow tried to paraphrase what he had told her, to make sure she had got it right. "So what you're telling me is that the TARDIS is a self-contained, self-aware pocket Universe?" Willow asked.

"Yep," the Doctor said, summing up a huge concept with one syllable.

"That is amazing. So when you keep referring to her as a 'she', you really mean it. The TARDIS is female, right?" Willow asked.

"Right again, Ms. Rosenberg. You're very bright. I wish more humans were like you," he said approvingly.

"That is so neat," Willow said. She remembered something Buffy had said the Doctor had told her and decided to ask him about it. "Buffy said you called yourself a self contained paradox," she said.

"Yes, as a Time Lord, I'm a self contained paradox. I exist outside of Time and Space," the Doctor said.

Willow thought about for a moment and then the implication dawned on her. She thought his race just had a pompous title; but what he was describing was the only way an individual would be able to travel in Time, change events and not be changed by them themselves. The Doctor watched her face and at the moment when her expression lightened he said, "Yep, that's right; otherwise we would have had to call ourselves the Space Lords."

Xander, Anya, and Giles came in next. Anya thought the interior was pretty, but nothing to write home about. The whole interior being larger than the exterior thing was old hat to a demon.

Xander was more practical. He had stepped back outside and measured with his outstretched arms just to make sure it wasn't his newfound lack of depth perception playing tricks on him. Xander was very impressed with the architecture of the control room. He told the Doctor how he liked the melding of the organic and the mechanical.

Giles had the biggest reaction of them all, at least for a British citizen. He took off his glasses and cleaned them twice.

Dawn came in carrying a teddy bear that had a small wooden stake sewn onto its hand. As soon as she did, the center column flashed a succession of colors and then held a steady green for nearly 30 seconds before going back to its normal light blue. Dawn had walked into the TARDIS feeling a strange, but nearly overwhelming sense of familiarity. She knew before she even walked through the doors that the inside would be bigger than the outside. The flashing light pattern coming from the Type 40's Time Rotor was a sign of a warm welcome to an old friend whom she had sorely missed. "_Type 40? How do I know that?_" Dawn asked herself. "_And why do I feel more at home here than I ever did with Buffy and Mom?_" she asked herself, feeling guilty. Dawn looked at the Doctor and the sense of familiarity became even stranger. She recognized him as both the Doctor and _someone_ else. Someone he had been before he had become the Doctor. He had been someone who had taken part in her creation.

"Dawny, you in there?" Willow said, waving her hand in front of Dawn's face.

"Yeah, sorry. I just got caught up in how awesome the sci-fi look is in here," she lied. She didn't want to stress out her friends any more than they already were. Knowing she was having strange flashbacks of her time before becoming human would have to wait.

Faith showed back up and started to lead the Scoobies to their rooms. She had almost made it to the doorway when Willow doubled over in stomach cramps. She fell to the ground, sweating and crying from the pain in her stomach and head. The Doctor ran to her and saw that Xander, Anya, and Giles were starting to look rather green as well.

The Doctor pulled out his sonic screw driver and waved it over first Willow and then the other Scoobies. Xander had dropped to one knee and Gilles was leaning against the railing. Buffy had run in when she heard Dawn scream. Buffy looked at the Doctor, pleading for him to do something.

The Doctor closed his eyes and spun around in a tight circle, running his hands through his hair. "I'm thick…thickety, thick, thick is what I am," he said. "Why didn't I realize this was going to happen," he said aloud. He raced to where Willow was lying nearly unconscious on the floor. "They are suffering from rapid withdrawal from the dark radiation," he told Buffy. "It can act like an addictive drug, similar to heroine," he explained.

"What can we do?" Buffy asked, fearing for her "family".

The Doctor tossed his coat onto the airline seats and loosened his tie. "I'll need to burn away as much residue as I can without harming them," the Doctor said.

The Doctor knelt beside Willow and put his hands on the side of her face. He made a mental push and broke through her already weakened mental shields.

Inside Willow's mind, the Doctor saw that Willow envisioned the horrible weight being put on her soul as an auditorium that was filling up with people. Willow was on stage and bombing during a one person show. As time went on, more and more people entered the room and took up seats. They were all pointing at her and laughing at parts that weren't supposed to be funny. The part of Willow's mind that was trying to stem the tide of darkness was dressed up as a movie usher and leaning up against a set of doors, holding them shut. Every so often the doors would shake, and Willow the usher would almost get thrown away from the door.

"Willow, get back, I'll hold them," the Doctor said. The Willow usher was distracted by the Doctor and was tossed aside by the doors which flung open. The Doctor took out his own mental talisman (a silver sonic screwdriver) and focused his rage at the damage being done to his friends. A writhing blast of gold and red Vortex energy slammed into the tide of theater patrons, causing them to vanish. He motioned with his other hand and the theater doors slammed shut and were welded shut by the energy. The Doctor turned in a slow circle, burning away a majority of the mocking audience. When he felt he could do no more, he offered a hand to the Willow usher and helped her up. "Can you take things from here?" he asked her.

"Can do, Doctor," the willow usher said, saluting. She walked over to the closest audience member and punched him squarely in the nose. "Shut up while the show is on," she commanded.

The Doctor stood up and looked down at Willow. Kennedy was holding her hand. Willow opened her eyes and smiled at him, understanding better than any of the others what the Doctor truly was. Like other times before when the Doctor touched a mind, a mind had crossed over to his. Willow had seen what the Doctor had sacrificed for the Earth. A tear slid down her cheek as she said with a profound love, "Thank you, Doctor."

The Doctor went to Giles next. He took a deep breath, summoning up the energy he would need. The act of joining minds was taxing to say the least. Giles was still conscious so the Doctor asked permission to begin, "I need to help you, may I enter your mind?" Giles nodded and the Doctor touched his head.

Giles was standing alone in field during the middle of the night. The Doctor looked up at the stars and judged they were somewhere in Great Brittan. Giles was barely standing, covered in hundreds of wounds ranging from small scratches to a deep cut in his left thigh. He was leaning on a broadsword, catching his breath. Giles looked up and saw the Doctor. "Oh, hello, Doctor," he said, always the polite British citizen.

The Doctor stood next to Giles, looking around for any signs of what Giles' psyche had turned the First's contamination into. The Doctor heard an inarticulate howling rage coming from a nearby field. "Oh, bloody hell," Giles swore. "Here they come again." Giles made a heroic effort to stand up straight despite the obvious pain he was in. He squared his shoulders and stared at the field where he knew the attack was coming from.

The Doctor looked at where Giles was staring and saw a vampire half-breed army racing towards them. There were so many of them the country side was black with screaming monsters. The Doctor thought about his screwdriver and didn't think that it would cut it this time. The First had been giving Giles a double dose. The Doctor turned around in a circle, looking for anything in the environment that might give him an idea. "We're in an open field with not even a roof to cover our heads," the Doctor complained. He looked up at the starry night and smiled. The Doctor grabbed Giles arm and pulled it in front of his face.

"What are doing?" Giles asked.

The Doctor was focusing on Giles wrist watch, willing it to change. A thin tendril of energy slipped from the Doctor's hand to the watch and the hands quickly spun around to the time he wanted. "I'm just checking the time, Giles," he said. "I don't have my reading glasses on me," he lied. "Can you tell me what time it is?" the Doctor asked.

"It's 7:00 o'clock," Giles said, looking at his own watch. The vampire hoard was getting uncomfortably close.

"Oh, that's good," the Doctor said, "'Cause we both know what happens about that time during a cloudless day like this," the Doctor prompted. Giles smiled as he turned his face to the Eastern horizon. The sun rose over the horizon and set off the rear ranks of vampires like a match tossed on a pool of fuel. Giles smile was grim as he strode to meet the first wave of vampires knowing they were in for a huge shock when their reinforcements never arrived and they too turned to dust as the life giving rays of the Sun eventually hit them.

The Doctor let go of Giles head and closed his eyes for just a moment until the room stopped spinning. He still had two more of the Scoobies to rescue. Well, saving humans (or a demon turned into a human) never was easy. He reached over to Anya, as she liked calling herself now, and reached across the mental void to contact her mind.

Faith watched in concern as the Doctor became weaker with each person he helped. By the time he got to Anya, she could tell he was straining himself to the limit. When he was done with Anya, the Doctor opened his eyes and gave Anya a very disturbed look. "Bunnies? I…bunnies?" he stammered, shaking his head in dismay. He took several deep breaths before moving again.

"Doc, Xander," Buffy pleaded.

"Yes, yes…of course," the Doctor said as he weaved his way to Xander. Faith could have slapped Buffy for forcing him to continue. She could tell he had pushed himself way beyond his limits. Faith could see it in the way his eyes weren't focusing. If she hadn't been sure about him exceeding his limits before, she was sure when he kept giggling about "butt-monkeys" when he finished helping Xander.

Faith rushed over to him and grabbed his arm. She drug him to feet and put his arm over her shoulder. Faith walked him out of the control room, unnoticed by the tearful Scoobies who were too busy hugging and apologizing to one another to notice them leaving. When they got to the hallway and the door shut behind them, she muttered to the half-conscious Doctor, "Sorry Doc, should have told me where your room was. Looks like you're bunking with me tonight." As she drug him to her room, she looked into his nearly catatonic face and said, "You better not snore."

**The Vineyard**

The First was pacing around the ceremony chamber she had the Bringers build for this single purpose. The room had been built in the mouth of a very windy cave. A set of shutters had been installed to block off the wind. A large pentagram had been chiseled into the rock floor with one of the points near the shutters. A Turok-Han was chained to the wall at one of the points and a human vampire was chained at another. That left the remaining two points. One had a bowl cut into the floor and the other was bare. In the center of the pentagram was a large bronze urn that contained ground up bones.

Caleb walked into the chamber carrying a bottle from the vineyard. The contents were definitely not what the bottle had been intended for. "You're late," the First scolded him.

"Do you know how hard it is to find virgin blood in South California?" Caleb reminded the First. "I had to drive all the way to LA to find some," he said.

"LA? I would think that would have been like trying to find a needle in an extremely large haystack," the First said.

"You would think so, wouldn't you?" Caleb drawled. He pulled out a folded flyer from the back pocket of his jeans. He unfolded it and showed it to the First who chuckled.

"I guess it would have been hard to find non-virgin blood in there," she giggled.

"Yep, hit the gold mine with a Star Trek convention. I got three cases of the stuff waiting to be put on ice in the back of my truck," he told her.

The First sobered up and pointed to the bowl cut into the ground. "Pour it there," she ordered. Caleb did so and smiled at what was going to come next. He always liked killing, even if the person was already dead. He looked over at the First who nodded her head, giving him permission to start the ceremony. She walked over and stood over the empty point of the pentagram.

Caleb walked over to the Turok-Han who was growling and snapping his teeth, trying to break its bonds. Caleb smelled the pungent odor of the fuel it had been soaked in. He took out a lighter and flicked it open with his thumb. "Ashes to ashes," he said and tossed the lighter onto the Uber-vamp. The creature screamed as it went up in flames. Caleb walked over to the human vampire and picked up the wooden stake that was lying next to it. The vampire just gibbered in terror. "Dust to dust," Caleb said as he staked the vampire, turning it to dust. He walked over to the far wall and pulled a lever, opening the shutters.

A huge gust of wind tore through the cavern. It passed over the point of the pentagram and became the essence of air. It swept past the smoldering ashes which stood for fire and mixed them with the dust, earth. The mixture passed over the virgin's blood and took on a crimson hue, the blood being a version of water. The whole mixture swept through the insubstantial form of the First, an evil spirit, and took on a black, swirling smoke like form. The smoke sped to the center of the pentagram where the bronze urn stood, which then exploded. The black smoked rose into a column shape and swirled around in the center of the pentagram, the center of the smoke too black to see into.

A second gust of air blew through the cavern, dispersing the smoke revealing a figure standing in the center of the pentagram. Caleb took stock of the newest member of their team. The "man" in the center of the pentagram was dressed all in black leather. He was pale white, like most of his kind. His fingers were long with talons instead of fingernails. The most striking thing about this vampire was the fact that his face resembled a Turok-Han more than a human. His lips were stained red from centuries of feeding. "Well, this is unexpected," the newcomer said curiously.

"Caleb, let me introduce you to the Master, the first person to kill Buffy," the First said. The Master did an elaborate bow, but looked up sharply at the mention of the Slayers name.

"Is she still causing problems?" the Master asked. "I thought one of my children would have eaten her by now," the Master said.

"From what I've heard, Spike's eaten her plenty of times, but that's neither here nor there," the First said blandly. Caleb winced at the sexual remark.

"So you brought me back to finish what I started?" the Master asked happily.

"No, we brought you back so you would be a good little soldier and kill someone else for us," Caleb told him.

The Master used the super speed acquired as a truly old vampire and slammed his knee into Caleb's groin before Caleb could even register he was being attacked. The Master followed up by grabbing Caleb by the throat and pinning him to the wall. He lifted the human up so that his toes were just barely touching the dirty ground.

"I guess I need to explain something," the Master said in a good natured voice. "You see, my name isn't 'the Servant', or 'the Lackey', and especially not 'Some Guy in a Funny Outfit's Bitch'," he said sweetly. The Master tightened his grip. Even with Caleb's enhanced strength given to him by the First, he couldn't budge the elder vampire's fingers. "No, I chose my name because I take orders from no one but myself," the Master said. He loosened his grip just enough to let Caleb breathe. "Now, why don't you remind me what my name is…boy,"

"The Master," Caleb choked out.

"Um…mind if I intrude?" the First asked. "But the other person we would like you to kill is another Slayer. Her line was activated when you killed Buffy," she explained.

The Master tossed Caleb across the room, one handed. "Oh, why didn't you just say so in the first place. I would be delighted to help," the Master said grinning.

**The TARDIS**

The Doctor woke suddenly, like he had ice water poured on his soul. He tried to think of what it was that had waked him, but came up blank. As he became aware of his senses, he realized he was lying in bed next to Faith. They were both still fully clothed. His left arm was draped over her side, just below her breasts. She seemed like she was still asleep. He had to make a decision. Did he flee or did he stay? He gave into temptation and stayed where he was, convincing himself he was just too tired to move. He knew it was a flimsy excuse. The Doctor felt his hearts pulling him towards this exceptional young woman. He ever so gently kissed the back of Faith's head so as not wake her. As he drifted off back to sleep, he really was exhausted from his ordeal with the Scoobies after all, he felt Faith move her arm, entwine her fingers with his, and pull him closer to her.


	5. Chapter 5

Author's note: I wanted to say thank you to MarcusSLazarus for all of the help he gave me on researching the Doctor and beta reading some of the scenes for me.

**The Doctor's Faith Healing  
Chapter 5**

Giles had spent the entire night perusing the Doctor's impressive library. He wasn't sure what the others needed, but what helped his soul the most was quiet time, immersing himself in knowledge. (The presence of such a marvelous tea making machine made things all the better.) Near the beginning of his odyssey through the sea of scrolls, manuscripts and books; Giles had made a rather fascinating discovery. Giles wasn't certain if it was localized to the Doctor's impressive library or if the Doctor had done something while inside his mind.

Giles began his evening in the center of the library, trying to decide where to start. He eventually chose to go where his passions lay and trotted off to the History wing. While walking there, Giles noticed the presence of red, humming energy fields scattered throughout the library. They were clear indicators as to which sections of the library were off limits to him. Once in the "History" wing, Giles had peered through one of the barriers and saw they had most likely been erected just for him. The particular section he was looking at through the red haze was labeled, "Earth events - 21st through 23rd Centuries". Giles shook his head in wonder as the meaning of "Time Lord" sunk in.

Giles scoured around the non-blocked off sections and came across an anti-chamber devoted to scrolls and tablets. He ran his fingers along the shelves, reading the labels off the bins stacked upon them. He stopped when he came across a bin that said the tablets inside where ancient Sumerian, ones that he knew had been lost during the burning of the library at Alexandria.

Giles reverently pulled a tablet out and laid it on a nearby table. He was disappointed to see that what he had taken to be an authentic clay tablet circa 2,000 BC was nothing more than an English translation. "Why would someone go through all the trouble to use authentic clay and stylus to write an English translation?" Giles wondered aloud. He looked down at the tablet in disgust. "The least they could have done was make a literal translation instead of a contextual one," he muttered. The letters blurred before his eyes and he was now staring at a literal translation of the missing tablet. "Good lord," Giles swore.

On a hunch, Giles picked up the tablet and walked back into the main part of the library. He remembered passing a mirror on his way to the History wing. When Giles got to the mirror, he held the tablet up and looked at the reflection. In the mirror, the writing on the tablet was an early version of cuneiform, just backwards. Giles watched his smile in the mirror grow to ridiculous proportions. He ran back to the tablet storage room and put back the Sumerian tablet in its proper bin, the librarian in him balking at the thought of just leaving it lying around. Giles spent the remainder of the night running from one section of the library to another, never reading in the same language twice. He was indulging his Ripper persona in a rather amusing book about fart jokes from some place called Raxacoricofallapatorius and having his eighth cup of tea that night (the machine made the only really decent cuppa since he had returned from England) when he was interrupted by Xander opening the door to the library. Giles quickly hid the crude book behind his back. "Can I help you," Giles said, trying to put his usual annoyed inflection in his voice. It was difficult considering he was still snickering about the last joke he read.

Xander gave a low whistle. "Will you look at those spiral staircases," he said in amazement. "Those are gorgeous. I bet that center pillar is just for show. If you look close enough you can see how perfectly spaced the steps are. Their center of balance would make it unnecessary to have that extra support," Xander said in admiration.

"Leave it to you, Xander," Giles said. "You come across one of the most amazing collection of written works in existence, and end up impressed with how one gets from one floor to another," Giles said dryly.

"Each to their one, G-man," Xander said. "Anyway, we're all having breakfast together and I came by to see if you wanted to grab some chow with us," he offered.

Giles looked down at his empty tea cup and came to the usual surprised conclusion that he always did when he got caught up in a library. He hadn't eaten for quite some time and was truly famished. "Yes, absolutely," Giles responded. "I hope the Doctor will be joining us. I have some questions for him regarding what he did for us last night," he said.

Willow took a stroll through the hallways of the TARDIS as Kennedy showered. They had a pleasant night of sex, and now she was taking time for herself to explore this marvelous being the Doctor called the TARDIS. Willow suspected she had another name, just as she suspected "the Doctor" wasn't the name their host was born with. She walked aimlessly through the corridors, not caring where she went. Willow had the distinct feeling the TARDIS would guide her wherever she needed to be. She peeked in doors and saw a huge kitchen, several laboratories, the gigantic pool the Doctor had told them about, and a huge wardrobe room large enough to make even Cordelia happy. Willow finally chose to go into a room when she found it was decorated like a garden.

The garden like room was illuminated from the ceiling by an artificial sky that looked just like the real thing. Willow could feel the warmth of the Sun on her skin. She noted that the architecture of the various gazebos were all based on designs found on Earth. In the center of the garden was a large hedge maze. Had a Time Lord been able to see the design of the maze from above, they would recognize the Great Seal of Gallifrey. Willow wandered into the maze, noting that there was a path cut directly to the center, just in case someone wanted to get there quickly. She brushed her fingers across the living hedges and felt the subtle difference in their aspect versus what grew on Earth. As a Wiccan, Willow was coming to think in terms of Mother Earth and Aunt TARDIS. Of course, this aunt was the cool kind you wanted to go hang out with, not the stuffy kind you dreaded visiting.

As Willow approached the center of the maze, she saw it held a fountain made of stone. It was beautiful in its simplicity, or it would have been had it been running, Willow thought. The fountain was made of white and tan stones forming a perfect ring surrounding a lone figure in the center. From a distance, the statue in the center looked like a nude girl with her knees pulled up to her chest. She was resting her head on her knees, the face turned away from Willow. As Willow got closer, she saw the statue didn't fit with the rest of the stately European garden theme, being that the statue was extremely lifelike. It was only when Willow was almost at the fountain that she saw Dawn's clothes folded neatly in a pile at the base of the dry fountain.

"Dawny?" Willow asked in concern.

Dawn turned her head and looked at her friend. She had a wistful, somewhat sad smile on her face. "Hey, Will," was all she said.

Willow wasn't sure what to do. This was definitely odd behavior for the teenage girl. On one hand, she wanted to pull Dawn out of there and have her put her clothes on; on the other, the sheer beauty of Dawn sitting there like that made Willow want to cry. She decided to wait and see if Dawn would give her some sort of explanation. Willow looked into where Dawn was sitting and saw that it wasn't a fountain at all, but rather a shallow pool with a smooth, concave interior.

"Do you remember what it was like before I came to Sunnydale?" Dawn asked quietly after a few minutes. It was topic that was taboo in the Summers house.

"You mean before you and Buffy moved here from LA?" Willow asked hopefully.

"No, I mean before I really came into existence in Sunnydale," Dawn said softly.

Willow looked down. "No, except for some random flashbacks, the memory implants by the monks are pretty stable. Why?" Willow asked, afraid of the answer.

Dawn didn't answer her. Instead she reached out an arm and gently caressed the stone sides of the pool she was sitting in. "Did you know we are at the exact center of the TARDIS?" Dawn asked rhetorically. "I was drawn here," she said. Dawn looked Willow in the eyes. "I know I've been here before. Just like I know this is a type 40 TARDIS and the Doctor is more than he wants to admit. But I don't know who I am," Dawn said sadly. Willow took a step forward and put her hand on the young girl's shoulder. Dawn cried for a moment and then used Willow's help to get out of the stone pool at the center of the TARDIS.

While Dawn got dressed, Willow decided it was safe to ask her the obvious question. "Sweetie, why were you sitting naked in an empty pool?" she asked.

Dawn finished pulling her shirt over her head and stroked the stone work of the pool once more. "It's hard to explain. I've been here before, I know I have," Dawn said. She looked around the garden slowly and then at Willow. "I have this overwhelming feeling that I should be more connected to them than I am. By taking off my clothes and sleeping there," Dawn indicated the pool, "I was able to be as close as I possibly could be to _her_. I haven't felt that much at peace since I became a human," Dawn admitted. "Please don't tell Buffy. She doesn't need to know her kid sister has gone bonkers and have one more thing to worry about," Dawn implored.

"Don't worry, Dawny," Willow said as she hugged Dawn. "I won't tell her, and we're all bonkers here," she laughed. "Come on, let's go find the others and get some breakfast."

The potentials were having a field day in the huge kitchen inside the TARDIS. The TARDIS had managed to stock their favorite breakfast foods based on psychic readings she had done during the night. Belgian waffles, oatmeal, and cold pizza were among the top choices. The coffee maker and tea machine were running at their full capacity for the first time since they had been created.

The Scoobies straggled in and sat at a large table in an alcove off to one side. Buffy and Spike were the last two to arrive. Buffy ignored the disapproving looks they got from Giles and Xander. Instead she focused on how close Faith was sitting next to the Doctor and how his previous skittishness around her seemed to have evaporated. "_Hope the poor guy doesn't get his heart broken,_" Buffy thought. She grabbed herself some cereal and coffee. Buffy was glad to be able to sit down with her friends again over caffeine, sugar coated goodness, and small talk.

Giles looked up from his streaky bacon, fried tomato, and fried bread to ask the Doctor about the event in the library. "Doctor, I experienced the most remarkable thing in your library," Giles said.

"You came across my fart book from Raxacoricofallapatorius didn't you?" the Doctor asked with a twinkle in his eye.

"Yes it was quite amusing…I mean no," Giles caught himself. "I was referring to my new ability to read in any language on Earth."

"Once you have been inside the TARDIS all languages since the dawn of Time will be translated for you. You never know who or what you will encounter while traveling in the old lady," the Doctor explained. "The only catch is the TARDIS has to be in the same timestream as you are to work. So once I leave, the language translation powers stop," he told a disappointed Giles.

After they shared a breakfast filled with stories about their explorations of the TARDIS (with the Doctor just leaning back in amusement) they left the potentials to their own devices while the Slayers, Scoobies, and the Doctor went to the control room to make battle plans. Buffy noticed again how Faith didn't stray very far from the Doctor's side. She chuckled silently to herself as she realized Spike was never more than 5 feet away from _her_. As "general" of the group, Buffy decided it was her job to break the ice and go first. "I know our last visit to the vineyard ended up really bad, but I think we should attack again," she said. The Scoobies immediately started protesting.

"_Nothing quite like getting right to the point,_" the Doctor thought. "Ok, I'm new here, so you'll have to fill me in. I take it the last foray into the lion's den didn't end so well?" he asked. The general look of dismay gave him his answer. "What was the original purpose?" he asked so he could be brought up to speed.

"Well, Caleb said he had something that belongs to Buffy, and she led us over there to get whatever it was back. Of course we don't even know he actually has anything, 'cause you know the bad guys are always so truthful," Xander said sarcastically.

"Oh, so he's lied to you in the past?" the Doctor asked so he could form a conclusion.

"Err, no…now that you mention it, he has always been rather forthcoming in a vicious, sociopathic way," Giles admitted.

"So he is probably telling the truth then?" the Doctor asked.

"By logical deduction, yes," Giles hesitantly answered.

"All right, what do you think he has?" the Doctor asked. He was met with a bunch of shrugging shoulders, except for Faith and Buffy. They both looked grim. The Doctor looked back and forth between them.

"It's a weapon of some kind," Buffy told him. "A really powerful one," she said.

Faith nodded her head. "Don't ask me how I know, but B is right," she said. "Caleb has a weapon that belongs to the Slayer, we _feel_ it," Faith said.

"A weapon," the Doctor sighed. He ran his hand through his hair. "Why does it always have to be a weapon? Why can't it be a nice notebook, or a really comfy chair for once? Just once I would like to fight a villain over a really comfy chair," the Doctor lamented.

"Sorry, Doc," Buffy said. "No Lazy Boy this time. It is something I think we can use to give us a fighting chance against the First," she said.

"That is all well and good, Buffy; but it doesn't change the fact that Caleb kicked the seven shades of shit out of us," Giles reminded her. "Also, we still have that intelligence on the Bringer's storehouse of weapons in the water tunnels we should act on."

The Doctor raised his hand. "May I ask another question?" Buffy nodded in his direction. "All this talk of weapon stockpiles and getting a super weapon reeks of an imminent battle. When is the Hellmouth due to fully open?" the Doctor asked.

"Any day now," Giles said, taking off his glasses and wiping them with his shirt.

The Doctor watched the nervous habit. "_And people give me a hard time for repressing my loneliness,_" he thought. "Well you do have a dilemma don't you?" he told them. "Do you send in another group to get a weapon that might help you beat the enemy or do you try to destroy the enemies ability to fight effectively?" he asked. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and absent mindedly tapped his chin with it while the others thought things through.

Giles watched the manic motions of the brilliant man and the careful way he danced around Faith; not too close, but never out of arm's reach. "_Good lord, that man needs to get laid worse than I do,_" Giles thought.

The Doctor gave them some more food for thought. "One other thing," he said. "You know that old Earth saying about the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results," the Doctor said, looking at Buffy. Buffy squared her shoulders, ready for a fight. She knew the weapon was important. "Do something different," the Doctor suggested. "Split your forces. Send in a main group to destroy the weapons, led by Faith and send Buffy to go get the weapon," he said.

"You're suggesting Buffy face Caleb alone," Giles said as if he heard the Doctor wrong.

"Not at all," the Doctor said. His face took on a predatory smile, "I've been looking forward to meeting this false priest of yours ever since I saw what he did to poor Xander over there." Xander smiled and tipped an imaginary hat to the Doctor.

The Scoobies had left the TARDIS and returned to Buffy's house. The potentials and Faith were in the living room, gearing up with weapons from the trunk kept behind the loveseat. The Doctor stood in the entryway, a sad look on his face. Faith finished tucking in another stake into her jacket, grabbed a long dagger, and went over to talk with him. She noticed his sad, far away stare. She snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Yo, Doc!" she said. She held the dagger out to him. "We have plenty to go around," she offered.

If anything, his face became even sadder. "No thank you,' he said. "I don't use weapons…anymore," the Doctor said, the last word barely audible.

Faith gave him a wicked grin, trying to cheer him up. "Probably for the best, you should leave the handling of some things to those who know how to do it the best," she said as she rubbed her leg against his inner thigh. A frown still on his face, the Doctor plucked the dagger out of her hands and brushed past her. He took two steps into the living room and flipped the dagger over so the blade rested in his palm. He spun around, throwing the dagger into the kitchen where Xander was enjoying a hotdog. The dagger sped past Xander's face and sliced the hotdog off before he could get it into his mouth. The dagger then buried itself in a wall. The Doctor stormed out of the house, yelling over his back to Xander, "Have a bloody banana for Vortex sake, they're much better for you."

Faith followed right behind him and found him sitting on the back steps with his head in his hands. "You want to tell me what the fuck that was all about?" she demanded. "If you don't want anything to do with me, just have the stones to come out and say it!" she yelled at him.

The Doctor looked up at her, tears streaming down his cheeks. Faith immediately lost her anger and sat down next to him. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled the Doctor in to her. "What happened in there?" she asked softly.

"It was like a flashback. I was remembering another time and place with a different group of young, oh so very young, people gearing up for a war that was forced upon them. Their leader offered me a weapon just like you did," he explained. "Back then, Ichos to take up weapons and fight," the Doctor whispered. Faith stroked his hair, waiting for him to continue. "I fought on the front lines of a terrible war, for many years. During some of it I was with a group of volunteer military fighters at a place called Acadia. They were all so young, just like those girls in there. Just like you are," he closed his eyes at the painful memory. "I was the only one to make it off of Acadia alive," the Doctor said, tears still streaming for his fallen teammates.

"We're lucky you did," she told him. "I'm lucky you did," she whispered.

The Doctor turned his face to look at her. "You're the one who should be wondering if she wants anything to do with me. Look at you. You're a gorgeous woman who is barely in her twenties and I'm a dusty old man who is nearing the millennium mark," the Doctor chided her.

Faith tussled his already messy hair. "The way I look at, that gives you plenty of time to learn new tricks in bed that I can only dream of," she said. His tears stopped only to be replaced by an embarrassed smile.

"Um, not really," the Doctor said. "I've only been sexual with two women my entire life," he admitted.

Faith dropped his head, which she had been cradling, in shock. "Get the fuck out of here," she said. The Doctor started to rise, but Faith grabbed his arm. "It's a saying," she told him. "You're telling me in over 900 years you've only been with two women?" she said in disbelief.

"Well, I was… married once. She died a long time ago, before I even left my home planet for the first time, and the other time, well she was a…a… friend who traveled with me about 400 years ago," the Doctor said. "My relationship with her lasted only a short time. We spent a bit more time learning about each other than actually, wellbein together, and even then it was only when we thought we were cut off from everything else. Shortly after that, she left to help out a race of former slaves in a tangent universe. When she managed to find her way home, she went on to become President of our home world. We stayed friends, but nothing more," he said, the loneliness evident in his voice.  
"Whoa, you haven't gotten laid in like 400 years," Faith asked, her face one of total disbelief that anyone would subject themselves to that.

"Oi, it's not like I haven't made out with any girls lately," the Doctor protested. "I've snogged plenty of girls…the King of France's mistress for instance," he said.

Faith smirked at him. "Which one?" she asked.

"Which mistress? Reinette Poisson, otherwise known as Madame de Pompadour," the Doctor said proudly.

"No, which King of France?" Faith replied.

The Doctor ran his finger around the collar of his shirt. "Oh…err…King Louis XV," he stammered.

"Uh, huh…and when did he rule?" Faith asked, pinning him down.

"…1758," the Doctor said. "But you see, I'm a Time traveler and…"

The back door opened and Giles motioned for Faith to come inside, interrupting the Doctor. He was thankful for the interruption. It saved him from explaining that the other women he had kissed had either been one time deals or had been Rose, who he had never told how he really felt about her until it was too late. When both of them were standing, Faith took a step away from him and then paused. She turned around and suddenly through her arms around his neck. Before the Doctor could react, Faith had her lips pressed against his in a forceful kiss. The Doctor went with it allowing her tongue to meet his.

Faith broke the kiss. "We'll pick this up where we left off when we get back," she promised. As she was entering the house, Faith licked her lips and grinned at the Doctor. "Aliens don't taste half-bad," she said approvingly.

Buffy walked out the door, turning her head to look at Faith as she passed by. She looked over at the Doctor and kept walking towards the TARDIS. "You ready for this?" she asked him.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows, still in a bit of shock. "Honestly, I'm not quite sure," he said.

**The Vineyard**

Caleb was relaxing near one of the huge barrels used for aging wine. He was leaning against it, picking at his fingernails with his favorite knife. That particular knife had freed six unclean whores from their burden of life. Caleb smiled as he remembered their sweet pleas for mercy and their eventual inarticulate scream. Eventually, he would show them mercy and spare them the torture of having to exist for one more moment as another filthy beast. Caleb was becoming quite aroused when he heard a strange sound coming from the opposite side of the building. He put the knife in his waist band and went to investigate.

"Well, that's a might peculiar," Caleb said curiously when he saw the TARDIS sitting off in a corner of the room.

"You must be Caleb," a British voice said from around one of the large casks lined up in the middle of the floor. A man wearing a brown overcoat over a brown pinstriped suit walked into view. "Hello, I'm the Doctor," the man said.

Caleb cocked his head to one side. "No offense, but I kinda thought you would be more…imposing," Caleb said making a wide gesture with his hands. His tone was still very polite.

The Doctor sucked on his teeth, put his hands in his pockets, and rocked on his heels. "Yeah, I get that a lot," he said. "Do you think it's the hair?" he asked Caleb. "Because I don't think it's the clothes. I mean I could understand it if I wore a bow tie or something ridiculous like that," the Doctor commented.

The Doctor never got an answer. Buffy smashed a keg sized wine barrel over Caleb's head from her hidden position above one of the larger casks. The blow would have killed a normal man. Caleb was knocked to one knee and then got back up. "Pardon me, Doctor. I have a vermin infestation I have to deal with," Caleb said. He punched the cask Buffy was laying on, collapsing it and dropping her to the ground. Caleb waded through the debris, grabbed Buffy, and threw her across the room. Buffy bounced off the wall and lay still for a moment.

Buffy raised herself up on her arms and faced the Doctor. "Nope, still insanity. Same results as last time," she said.

"All right, let's add some variables," the Doctor said. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at Caleb. He thumbed the switch and for a moment nothing appeared to happen.

Caleb made a point of looking over his body. "Sorry, Doctor, once again, not really all that impressed. In fact, I really don't see what all the fuss is about. It's not like you and the filthy whores stand a chance of ever defeating us anyway," Caleb said matter of factly. "As long as there are people, there will be evil thoughts; and as long as there are evil thoughts, the First will be here amongst us," he said. Caleb looked at the sonic screwdriver which the Doctor was still pointing in his direction. "If it's not too much trouble, do you mind telling me what that little doo hickey there is supposed to do?" Caleb asked.

"The sonic screwdriver? Oh, it does lots and lots of things," the Doctor said. "It works as a scanner, a torch, and a hacking tool…all kinds of wondrous things. All though, to be perfectly honest, I have the darndest time getting an actual screw to turn," the Doctor admitted. "Of course right now, I'm using it to excite the molecules in an ethanol rich liquid," he told Caleb.

"Pardon?" Caleb asked. Buffy pointed to the large brandy cask set into the wall behind Caleb. The wood slats on the front of the huge barrel were vibrating at an alarming rate. The large cork holding in the burgundy liquid flew out and smacked Caleb in the face right before the wood gave way and the contents of the cask spilled out onto the floor.

"B, look!" the Doctor shouted, pointing to a spot on the floor where the liquid was pouring through the cracks in a trap door.

"Now I am impressed, Doctor," Caleb said clapping his hands. "It's like I told that vampire we resurrected, 'work smarter, not harder'. I gave him that bomb to use at the water tunnels to make our trap for the other Slayer that much easier," Caleb bragged.

The Doctor and Buffy looked at each other for a stunned second. "Go, Doctor! I'll get the weapon and meet you back at the house," she ordered the Doctor. The Doctor ran to the TARDIS, snapping his fingers once as he ran. The doors opened just as he reached them. Buffy and Caleb took time out of their fight to watch the TARDIS dematerialize.

"Well, that's something you don't see every day," Caleb drawled. He turned around to take up the fight again with Buffy, except Buffy was nowhere in sight. Caleb continued turning in a slow circle and caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He saw Buffy dash behind a pillar. Caleb raced after her only to find she had moved to a different hiding spot. "This isn't like you darling," Caleb taunted. "Did I knock all the fight out of you?" he asked. Caleb saw a small piece of Buffy's jacket sticking out from behind a barrel. He snuck up on it and crushed the barrel with his hands. Caleb held up Buffy's empty jacket. He spun around and saw her open up the trap door. Buffy jumped down into the cavern where the weapon was being uncovered before he could stop her.

Buffy looked around the brightly lit cavern and saw several Bringers working on removing the stone from around a red axe like weapon which was embedded in a large boulder. Buffy ran towards it as she heard Caleb drop down into the cavern behind her. She vaulted over the Bringers and landed on top of the boulder. The weapon was still encased in several inches of stone with only the tip of the blade and part of the handle showing.

"Now what are you planning on doing up there I reckon?" Caleb pondered as he slowly walked towards the boulder, a confident smile on his face. Buffy grabbed the handle of the weapon and the stone around it turned to dust, freeing the impressive looking tool of death. "Oh…well, I suppose you could go and do something like that," Caleb said in surprise.

Buffy stood up, took a step back, and then launched herself over the heads of the Bringers which had stopped work on the boulder. As she flipped over them she swung the perfectly balanced Scythe and lopped off two heads before landing. Caleb was about to attack her when the First Buffy appeared behind him and whispered in his ear, "Let her go." Caleb bit his tongue and took a step back, letting Buffy run past him and then out through the cavern system. "The weapon will only bring her false confidence and draw the final battle to us that much sooner," she said in anticipation.

**Water Tunnels**

Faith took point as she led a team of potentials through the damp tunnels under Sunnydale. Kennedy was behind her, followed by Amanda and Caridad, with Vi covering the rear. They were doing a good job of keeping it together, but Faith could have done with less of Kennedy's back seat driving. "There's no one down here. We can pick up the pace," Kennedy complained.

Not for the first time, Faith wondered what Willow saw in the brash potential. Faith figured Kennedy must have been one of those people who could fold a Starburst wrapper into an origami swan with her tongue or something like that. "If you want to go first, be my guest. We'll know where the bad guys are by where your steaming corpse is," Faith said sweetly, making a sweeping motion with her hand down the tunnel. "Do me favor and shut the fuck up so I can hear. Vamps don't have to breathe, but they do get antsy and shift around. I can't hear them when you're bitching," she reminded Kennedy.

The group came to the end of the tunnel with a door locked with 4 different padlocks on the outside. "Guess we're here," Faith said. She held out her hand and Amanda handed her the pry bar she had been carrying. Faith made short work of the locks and opened the door. The room inside was a large cistern the size of a football field. A ledge ran the length of the large room about 20 feet above their heads. A pier went from the water's edge into the middle of the room. At the end of the pier was a large metal box, completely out of place. Kennedy started to walk towards it. Faith put her hand out and slapped Kennedy on the chest, hard; stopping her. "Can we say 'trap' children?" Faith asked sarcastically.

"What is with you, Faith?" Kennedy asked. "You get a little alien dick and all of sudden you're paranoid?"

Faith grabbed Kennedy's jacket and effortless tossed the other girl over her head and into the ice cold water. When Kennedy swam back to the edge, Faith was squatting in front of her with her elbows on her knees, tapping her palm with a stake. "Two things, you stuck up bitch. One, the Doc and I haven't got it on yet, but I plan on fixing that as soon as I can. Two, I sincerely doubt it's little," she said before she pushed Kennedy back into the water before letting her climb out. "You guys wait here while I check the box out," Faith ordered.

Faith walked cautiously down the catwalk and reached the large metal shipping container. She twisted the padlock off the front of it with her hand. Faith opened the lid slowly and sighed a tired, "Fuck." The contents of the box weren't weapons; it was filled with explosives and a detonator with a digital readout that said she had 3 seconds left. Faith dropped the lid and yelled, "Bomb, Run!" She dived over the side and saw the potentials run out the door from the corner of her eye as she hit the water.

Faith dove deep and felt the shove wave as the bomb exploded above her. When she resurfaced, Faith saw the box was intact, but where the door was, was nothing but rubble now. Faith swam towards where the door was and was met by a black clad vampire with the face of a Turok-Han resting on one of the boulders that had dropped from the ceiling. He was holding a towel that he tossed on the ground in front of her.

The First Buffy appeared next to the vampire. "This wasn't our agreement. You were supposed to set up the bomb just as Caleb showed you and then kill the injured Slayer after that," the First said.

"Caleb is an ass," he said simply. "He just doesn't understand the finer points of the game. But you do, don't you, Faith? It is Faith, right?" the vampire asked politely.

Faith pulled herself out water and began drying off her hair with the towel. The emergency lights in the room came on and she could see the vampire better. The red stain around his mouth gave him away. She recognized him from the stories the Scoobies had told her. "Hey, didn't Buffy stake your ass when she was like a Sophomore in high school?" Faith asked challengingly.

"I fell," the Master said defensively. "I fell on a broken desk. I'm not even sure that counts," he said.

"Ok, whatever," Faith said. She held up her fist to her mouth and faked coughed, Staked your ass"

The Master pointed one of his clawed fingers at Faith and looked at the First. He had a smile on his face, clearly enjoying himself. "You see, that is why I didn't blow up the box. It would have been over way too soon. Your boy with the twisted Oedipus complex doesn't understand the real thrill comes from having a worthy opponent," the Master said.

"I brought you back for a reason, kill her already," the First ordered.

"What's the rush?" the Master asked. "Is there something you're not telling me? Did you and your little human boy make a mistake?" the Master asked impudently. "No matter…she is my kill and I will do so at my own pace, thank you very much," he said. The Master turned away from the First, effectively dismissing the ancient evil. "Now where were we, Faith? Oh yes, my name is the Master. What did you think of my little trap to lure you here?" he asked.

"Oh for evil's sake. This is going to go on for all night," the First said. She was constrained by the treaty on what she could tell her soldiers and the fact that the Doctor was on his way there at that very moment was one of the things she couldn't share.

The Master smirked at her annoyed tone and hoped his stalling tactics were working. He had set up a wall in his mind to block off his true intentions from his current employer. He was rewarded for his patience by the sound of the TARDIS materializing in the room.

The doors to the TARDIS flew open and the Doctor ran out. He saw Faith and ran to her, putting himself between her and the enemy. Faith rolled her eyes and pushedhi behind her. "Vampire Slayer, remember?" she scolded the Doctor.

The Doctor gave Faith a sheepish smile. "Sorry, forgot that part again," he said. "Who's that chap?" he asked, squinting his eyes in the dim light.

"He calls himself the Master," faith told the Doctor.

"Pshhh…I knew the Master and that young lady is not the Master," he said haughtily.

"Because you took your own sweet time, you now have the Destroyer of Worlds to deal with as well as a Slayer. I hope you're happy," the First told the Master. The First was thoroughly disappointed in the vampire she had brought back from the grave again. She had heard so many wonderful tales about how evil he was and the plots he had conceived. She disappeared in disgust, leaving the vampire to take care of his own mess.

"I thought she would never leave," the Master said. He looked at the Doctor thoughtfully. "So you're the Destroyer of Worlds?" he asked the Doctor.

"That's what your kind calls me," the Doctor said.

"Come now, Doctor. We aren't all that superstitious," he said, surprising the Doctor. "Oh yes, I know what you are normally called. I know many things about you. It is amazing what you can learn when you talk to older demons over a still warm corpse," the Master said. "For instance," he took out a remote switch from his pocket, "I know that if I were to push this button, the remaining explosives in that box will kill everyone in this room; but you would just regenerate into a new body, cheating death once again."

"What is your point?" the Doctor asked coldly.

"I'm simply pointing out that we are at a stalemate. You have something I want. I can take the life of this human if you won't give it to me," the Master explained.

"I don't even know what you want," the Doctor said.

"Rogaine?" Faith suggested. The Doctor gave her a dirty look. Faith just smiled innocently at him.

"What I want is something simple and after I get it, I plan on leaving town and this stupid little tiff between the First and Fluffy…" the Master said.

"Buffy," the Doctor corrected, interrupting.

"Are you sure? Buffy? I should have stayed in Europe," the Master said. "What I want is a taste of your blood, Doctor. Nothing more," he told the Doctor. "Just a taste, maybe enough to make you light headed, but not enough to kill you," the Master assured the Doctor.

"Right, and how do I know you won't just blow us up when you're done," the Doctor asked.

"I give you my word as head of the Order of Aurelius," the Master said, holding up his right hand.

"Doc, this is a bad idea," Faith said.

"I agree completely, but I won't risk losing you," the doctor told Faith.

The Master caught the little exchange between them. "Funny, Doctor, I would have always thought you were into blondes," the Master taunted.

Glaring at the Master, the Doctor rolled up his sleeve and walked forward. He held out his bare arm in front of the vampire who grabbed it with his free hand. The Master sank his fangs into the Doctor's arm and drank deeply of the Time Lord's blood. The Doctor tried to pull away several times and eventually pushed off with his foot yelling, "Enough!"

The Master ran his tongue around his lips, making sure no drop of blood was wasted. "Now that hits the spot," he said. "A deal is a deal," the Master said. He ran towards the wall and easily jumped the 20 feet to the ledge above. He moved a block and a concealed door swung open. The Master held out his hand with the remote detonator. He casually thumbed the switch and tossed the device into the water. "Ten seconds, Doctor," the Master warned. Laughing, the Master shut the door behind him and ran down the escape tunnel.

"Run!" the Doctor yelled as he grabbed Faith's hand. They ran into the TARDIS. The Doctor slammed down the button to shut the doors and hit the buttons and knobs to initiate an emergency dematerialization. The Time Rotor rose and fell with less than one second to spare.

The Master slowed to a walk and then had to stop as he felt the Doctor's blood work its way through his own body. The ancient vampire doubled over in pain as the blood of the hunters made its way to each cell. The Master smiled through the pain. "Finally," he said. A golden and white light shot out from his collar and under his sleeves. The Master stood and flung his arms out as the energy of the Vortex flowed through him once again. When the light faded, the face of the man in the tunnel no longer resembled that of a Turok-Han; it was human once again. Having learned a long time ago how to control a regeneration, he brought back his brown hair and brown eyes that would were so feared in the year that the Doctor and his infuriating companions erased. The man who had once been known as Harold Saxon reached up and felt the satisfying scratchy texture of a five o'clock shadow. "Ah, it's so good to be back," he said.

The Master was in a wonderful mood as he jogged down the tunnel. He thought back on the strange events that had led him to this particular time space point. Oddly enough it came about from saving the Doctor's life, something he wasn't fond of doing. When Rassilon had used Omega's Hand (not to be confused with the Hand of Omega – he had made that mistake in Kindergarten and been threatened with an early visit to the Schism) to try and blast the Doctor into oblivion, the Master had jumped in front of the energy arc to save his old enemy.

The collapse of the Moment back into time stasis combined with the power of the Hand threw the Master backwards in Time over a thousand years. He awoke during the night in the countryside far away from any human habitation. A passing vampire took his sudden appearance as manna from heaven. The vampire attacked the still weak Master and drained him of most of his blood. However, the Master had been deader than that before and possessing one of the strongest wills to continue living that had ever existed, he gouged out the vampire's eyes and drank the blood that flowed from the sockets. The Master crawled to a cave and died yet again. The next night he arose as the vampire that would later rule the Order of Aurelius; his alien DNA causing the obvious facial changes that he led his more gullible followers to believe was because he had transcended the need to look like a human.

The Master spent the years after that trying to cause a big enough problem draw the Doctor's attention. He was certain an infusion of Time Lord blood would give him the energy he needed to force a regeneration. The problem was the dammed Slayers kept interfering and buggering things up just enough that the World wasn't put into any real jeopardy. He thought he had finally come up with the right plan when he tried to open the Hellmouth. The Master shook his head in disgust at how both of those attempts had ended in royal cock-ups.

The Masters forgot about his past failures as he neared the end of the evacuation tunnel. Sunlight was pouring in from the cloudless sky. The Master strode out without a care and then came rushing back in, his skin and hair smoking. The Master blew out a small flame on the back of his hand. He put a hand over each heart and felt neither one beating. "Shit!" the Master swore.


	6. Chapter 6

Author's Note: Some of the dialogue in the final scene in this chapter comes directly from the BtVS episode "End of Days".

**The Doctor's Faith Healing  
Chapter 6**

**The Summers House**

The TARDIS did an emergency landing in the middle of Buffy's living room. Thanks to Spike having heard the noise earlier, he was able to get everyone out before the TARDIS made its sudden appearance. The Doctor poked his head out and looked around. He seemed quite surprised that he had managed to keep the TARDIS on the same planet in the same timestream after and stunt like that. Faith walked out of the TARDIS and plopped down on the couch. The front door opened and the potentials Faith had led into the tunnels walked into the house.

"See, I told you it was a trap," Faith said nonchalantly. Kennedy just stared at her, her jaw slack. The other potentials bumped into her trying to get inside.

The Doctor finished an outside inspection of the TARDIS and turned to speak with Spike. "Did Buffy get back yet?" he asked.

"Yeah, she's upstairs with Giles, Willow, and her new toy," Spike said. "I'm staying the hell away from that thing. It gives me the willies," Spike admitted.

Faith and the Doctor went upstairs and found Buffy and the others in Buffy's bedroom. "What did you find, B?" Faith asked.

"This," Buffy said showing Faith the Scythe. The Doctor gasped.

"We're trying to figure out what the markings on the blade mean," Willow said.

"Yes, so far we haven't even been able to come up with what base language they are from," Giles said, cleaning his glasses. "I had hoped the TARDIS would have allowed me to read them. I have been able to read everything else in my collection with ease," Giles said.

"It's a safety protocol in case one of the Companions turns on the Time Lord and they needed to send a message back home," the Doctor said. The others in the room looked at him for more of an explanation. He was staring at the Scythe like it was alive and it was going to bite him at any moment. "The language is High Gallifreyan, the language of the Time Lords," he told them.

Willow was the first person to catch on. She pointed at the Scythe. "Does that mean the Scythe is a Time Lord artifact?" she asked the Doctor.

"The weapon you are holding is called Storm's Fury. It belonged to one of the founders of our society, the Other," the Doctor told Buffy.

Giles looked at the Scythe and remembered that one of the names the Doctor's enemies called him was "the Oncoming Storm." He wondered if there was a connection. Giles then asked a question he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to. "Doctor, if this is a relic of the Time Lords, it would imply that your kind has been interfering with ours for a very long time. Do you know how long it has been going on?" he asked.

"Well I can't say for other Time Lords, but personally I have been making sure your species has had a fair shake at survival long before you even evolved," the Doctor said in an offhand manner. "But that is a discussion for another time," he said. The Doctor reached out slowly and laid a hand on the shaft of Storm's Fury. "We need to discuss Storm's Fury," he told them. Faith put her hand on top of his.

Both Slayers were touching the Scythe when Faith called it by name, "Storm's Fury," she said. The Scythe glowed and Buffy and Faith found themselves on a ledge overlooking a huge underground cavern. A man was standing at the edge of the ledge looking down. He was dressed in an odd looking black robe with a collar piece that stuck up a foot beyond his head. Faith and Buffy joined him at the edge of the cliff face and looked over. They both gasped when they saw the sea of Turok-Han swarming on the cavern floor below. The man turned to face them and the Slayers backed away when they saw his eyes had been replaced by glowing yellow and red fire.

"Where are the rest of the Vampire Slayers?" the being asked, his other worldly voice reverberating. His face was constantly shifting. At first it was the face of a kindly old man with white hair. The next face was a man with close cropped brown hair and big ears. The next two faces were of a man with bushy hair and big teeth and then a distinguished man with white hair again.

"What do mean 'Where are the rest?' You're lucky there are two of us," Faith said, putting her hands on her hips, refusing to be intimidated. "You know, the whole 'One in every generation' thing," she said.

The being looked at the Slayers. "You're not impressed with the robes or voice thing at all, are you?" he asked. His face shifted again and he had an almost comical, wrinkled face with black hair cut like someone had put a bowl on his head and cut around the edge. The Slayers shook their heads.

"Can you knock it off with the face thing, it's kinda creepy," Buffy said. "Not in an impressive way; just a creepy 'I can't figure out who I want to be' way," she said to the shifting faces.

The man's robes shifted from a dark version of a Gallifreyan ceremonial robe to a pair of blue jeans and a tee shirt that read "Trust me, I'm a Doctor". His face shifted one last time and this did cause the Slayers to feel a little disturbed. He wore the Doctor's current face. "Bet you didn't even know he owned a pair of jeans," the man said using the Doctor's normal voice. "Allow me to introduce myself, I am the Other and you Buffy are holding my Scythe," the Other said.

"O…K…that sounds dirty," Buffy said slowly.

The Other smiled at them. "Oh it could be much worse. Of the three original weapons of power, at least you're not holding Rassilon's Rod or Omega's Hand," he joked.

Faith snickered. "Wow, you guys didn't get out much," she said.

"_They_ didn't get out of the lab very often," the Other said, winking at Faith. He slid his finger along the blade of Storm's Furry which Buffy was still carrying. "Me, I got out plenty," he said. "Did you know they actually gave me a hard time about naming the scythe 'Storm's Furry'?" he asked rhetorically. "I mean come on. Rassilon builds a big pole with a sphere at one end and calls it Rassilon's Rod and he gives me shit about naming my scythe Storm's Fury," the Other said.

Faith snickered. "You have got to be kidding me," Buffy said.

"Nope, about a meter long shaft with a ball at the end. At least Omega wasn't in a phallic mood when he built his weapon. Omega's Hand was simply a silver gauntlet. That man didn't have a creative bone in his whole body. He was great at 4th and 5th dimensional physics, not mention matter transference theory, but if you asked him to name a painting he would probably call it oil paint on a canvas," he said.

"I'm sorry. I have to ask; otherwise I will have this awful porn shop image stuck in my mind. I mean come on, hand and rod? What the hell do they do?" Faith asked the Other.

"Omega built Omega's Hand to tap into the powers of his stellar manipulation device, the Hand of Omega. See what I mean about the guy not having any creativity?" the Other asked. "The Hand of Omega was used to ignite stars into supernovas and create black holes. The gauntlet version simply changed the phase structure of nearby matter. It also had a wicked electrical discharge if I remember correctly," he said. "As for Rassilon's Rod… well, it was used to tie into a complex web of energy fields and create any number of unpleasant effects. The web was so complex and back tracked so many times, we suspected Rassilon was well on his way to becoming extremely paranoid," the Other said. "Turns out the Rod was also really good at bashing in a vampire slave's skull," he said.

"Ok, not sexual aids," Faith said. She leaned over and ogled the image of the Other wearing the Doctor's body in tight jeans. "Doesn't mean I'm not going to keep having dirty thoughts," she warned him.

The Other smiled at Faith again. "So much like my Patience," he muttered. "No wonder he is so taken by you," the Other told Faith. "Anyway, in case you're wondering; other than being great at chopping things into little dead pieces, Storm's Fury ties the owner directly into the power of the Vortex. That energy gives them enhanced strength and healing abilities," he said.

"Eventually our arguing about the names of the weapons gave way to an argument about which one was the most powerful. We decided the only fair way to end the discussion was to have a contest," he said. "The contest the three of us had devised was simple. We were at the end of the Vampire War and found a planet that had been taken over by the last Great Vampire. It had converted the entire population to a slave race, what you refer to as vampires," the Other told them. "Instead of sending in a bowship fleet to finish the monster off, we arranged for the three of us to be dropped near the Vampire citadel and see which of us of did the most damage before we had to send for a recall ship," the Other explained.

"Rassilon was the first to be evacuated. He always was too much of a nancy to handle field work," the Other said. "Omega and I attacked the vampire citadel from opposite sides. We lost track of how many days we fought," he said. "Eventually the fighting became too intense for Omega and it drove him mad. The medical ship came in and was able to save him. I kept on fighting and broke through the defenses, making it inside," the Other said. "I sliced through the last slave, strode into the throne room, and declared myself the Time Lord Victorious," he said.

Faith watched as even with his lack of eyes, the Other's face took on an identical look of shame and sadness she had seen on the Doctor before when he spoke about the "real" vampires. The look made her forget for just a moment that she was talking with the Other and not the man she was falling for. "What happened?" she asked softly.

The Other gave her a look of thanks for the kindness in her voice. "Because of our arrogance and vanity, the last Vampire managed to escape the planet. It was only later did we find out it had been the Vampire King we had missed out on killing," he said. "We tried to track him and came up with several likely spots that he may have gone to ground. Earth was one of them. Omega and Rassilon wanted to ignite your sun and vaporize your entire system. I convinced them to try and let me flush the King out," the Other said. "To my surprise, he had already left by the time I got here, but he had created two separate slave races." The Other gestured to the sea of Turok-Han swarming down below. "I knew that eventually these half-breeds would ravage your world, so I set in motion a plan to leave a race of 'half-breed' warriors of my own, the Vampire Slayers. I sent a drone out around your planet, seeding the population with a random mutation that would allow the person to tap into the strength and healing properties of Storm's Furry. Unfortunately my knowledge of human genetics wasn't as good as it could be and I was only able to tie the mutation to a sex linked gene, thus the reason for the Slayers always being female," the Other told the Slayers.

"So that explains the Potentials, but why only one Slayer at a time? You have no idea how awful it is having to shoulder these responsibilities alone," Buffy told him.

The Other looked at her, his head tilted like he didn't understand. "You said that before about being the only one. I don't understand. Storm's Fury was programmed to activate all Slayers as soon as they came of age," the Other said. "May I take a look?" he asked, holding out his hand for the weapon which had once belonged to him. Buffy shrugged her shoulders and handed the Scythe over to the Other.

The Other closed his eyes for a moment and then muttered something vehemently in a language the Slayers didn't understand. Even though she didn't understand it, Faith was pretty certain it had something to do with somebody's mother and an inappropriate relationship.

"Somebody's laid some kind of barrier over Storm's Fury limiting the energy output to just one person!" the Other said angrily. "I've never seen anything like this before, it has nothing to do with the technology I used to create it," he said.

"Magic," Buffy and Faith said together.

"There were some old guys who were too comfortable with keeping women as second class citizens. They claimed to be the ones who gave the Slayer her powers, but it looks like all they really did was limit them," Buffy said. A seed of an idea began growing in her mind. She would have to talk with Willow about it.

While Buffy was talking about the old men, Faith had walked back over to the edge of the cliff and looked over. "Hey, this is a neat show and tell and everything, but I have a question," she told the Other. "Is there a point to all this? Because we really do have shit to do. You know like win a war against the First evil," she said.

The Other gestured with Storm's Fury around the cavern. "This…is what is below Sunnydale right now," the Other told her.

Faith looked down again at the Turok-Han. "Fuck-an-A," she said. "All right, B. You take the million on the left and I'll take the million on the right," Faith said, cracking her neck, loosening up for a fight.

The Other stepped closer to her. "You really are going to fight them, even though the two of you don't stand a chance of winning, aren't you?" the Other asked her.

Faith gave him a sassy smile. "You bet your cute ass we are," she said.

"No wonder the Doctor loves your race so much," the Other muttered under his breath. "Faith, the Doctor has feelings for you; romantic feelings," the Other told her. Faith smiled at the confirmation of her hopes. "He has saved the Universe several times and your planet more times than you can imagine. He deserves more than a human when it comes to a romantic relationship," he told her.

"Excuse me," Faith said putting her hands on her hips, offended.

"It's not your fault you're only human, but like I said, the Doctor deserves more than that," the Other said. He turned his face towards Buffy. "Buffy, there are two things that you need to tell the Doctor. The first is that if he wants to succeed, he must take up the mantle of Time Lord Victorious. And the other is…well… tell him this is my last gift to him," he said to Buffy. The Other began spinning his old weapon in a tight pattern around his body. The blade and pointed shaft of the deadly Scythe began to glow. Gold and red energy discharges lanced from the tip and blade to the ground and roof of the cavern. The Other took a quick step forward and thrust the pointed shaft of Storm's Fury into Faith's heart, causing her to gasp in pain and shock. She looked up at the Other, betrayal in her eyes. Vortex energy crackled back and forth from the wound in her chest to the shaft of the weapon. Faith slid off the end of the Scythe and the world returned to Buffy's bedroom.

Faith slumped lifeless to the floor, a burn mark in her shirt, right above her heart. "Faith!" the Doctor yelled and raced to her side. He felt for her pulse and found a very faint one. The Doctor scooped her up and held her in his arms. After a few moments, Faith began to stir when her Slayer healing kicked in.

"Ouch," Faith said weakly. She blinked her eyes open and was glad to see it was him who was holding her. "Hey Doc, is the Other dead?" she asked in almost a whisper.

"Err…more or less," the Doctor hedged.

"That's too bad, because I really want to kick his ass right now," Faith said. The Doctor laughed, knowing his Faith was going to be all right. He kissed the top of her head twice. Faith sighed. After an ordeal like that, she really wanted those kisses somewhere else. Faith decided to do something about it. She got up to her feet and stood with the help of the Doctor.

"Faith, you just had a major psychic trauma that translated into physical damage, you probably shouldn't be standing right now," the Doctor suggested.

Faith smiled when he she thought that her plans had pretty much had nothing to do with standing. "Just give me a few moments," Faith said, rubbing the tender spot between her breasts. "Hell, B's given me a lot worse," she said. Faith reached over and squeezed his arm. "I'll be all right," she told the Doctor. She looked into his warm eyes. "Would you mind giving us a moment alone, Doc? I would like to discuss something with B," Faith asked.

"As long as you're all right," the Doctor said. "I'll be in the TARDIS if anyone needs me," he said. Faith watched him leave. The image of his butt in tight jeans still fresh in her mind.

Buffy, being Faith's sister Slayer, was even more used to their healing abilities than she was and was not the least bit surprised Faith was up and walking around so quickly. Whatever didn't kill a Slayer so on and so forth. Still, getting stabbed with an alien super weapon that was tied directly to your own super powers wasn't something that happened on a daily basis, even for a Sunnydale Slayer.

"Really Faith, are you feeling ok?" Buffy asked.

Faith rubbed the burnt tee shirt. "Kinda sore. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind if I took the rest of the evening off," Faith asked Buffy.

"Yeah, go ahead. After what we saw below the Hellmouth and what the Other told us about the original purpose of Storm's Fury, I want to go over an idea I have with Willow," Buffy said.

"Thanks, B. I'm going head down to the TARDIS for some down time," Faith told them.

Spike gave Faith an impish grin. "And I suppose you'll be wanting to be under a Doctor's care for the night as well?" he teased.

"Nah, I just want be under the Doctor," Faith told him. Spike choked on a laugh and Willow blushed a deep red.

"Oh good lord, I did not just hear that," Giles said. "Please get some rest, we will be fine, Faith," he said.

Faith looked down at her burnt tee shirt. She opened Buffy's closet and grabbed a blue shirt without asking. "Hey B, since the Other ruined my shirt with your new toy, I'm going to borrow one of yours for the evening," she told Buffy. Buffy grabbed the shirt out of her hands and replaced it with a pink one.

"I was planning on wearing that one later," Buffy told Faith. In truth she hadn't even remembered she had owned that shirt, but a girl's closet is her domain.

"Thanks, B. If I get anything on it, I'll have the Doctor spring for the cleaning bill," Faith said.

Willow put her fingers in her ears, "La…la…la…not hearing this. I'm not hearing about alien seductions," she said loudly.

Giles put his head in his hand and muttered, not for the first time, "…and the fate of the World rest in the hands of these two. I should have joined UNIT." Buffy and Faith both heard him with their enhanced senses of hearing. Buffy stuck out her tongue. Faith gave him the finger and went to the bathroom to change shirts.

As Faith was walking back to the large blue call box in the living room, Spike popped his head out of Buffy's bedroom and yelled out to her, "Hey, Faith! Don't do anything that I wouldn't do."

Faith shot back, "What exactly won't you do? B's told me some stories," she said.

"Yeah, good point," Spike said cheerily. "Have fun."

The doors opened slower than normal when Faith got to the TARDIS. It was if they were trying to be extra quiet. Faith took the hint and snuck into the old Police Box with stealth learned from living on the streets and spending your evenings hunting creatures of the night. She looked around the control room and found the Doctor deep in conversation with the center console.

"Some help you're being," the Doctor said sarcastically. "You're supposed to keep me out of situations like this, remember. I can't lose her like I lost Rose," he said. The center column housing the Time Rotor glowed a soothing red. "Yes, yes...you said that before, but telling her how I feel about her from the beginning will mean that I will have to tell her what I've done. She deserves to know what she is getting into," the Doctor told his symbiotic partner. "Faith is a hero, like Buffy. Heroes don't deserve to be with people who have done the awful things I have," he said sadly. The Doctor closed his eyes and leaned his forehead on the column.

_"What the fuck is he talking about?_" Faith wondered. She couldn't even begin to think what her kind and gentle Doctor could do that would be so bad that he thought she would reject him out of hand. A small smile played over her lips. _"It's kinda cute. Even alien guys are afraid of rejection,"_ Faith thought. "I'm not a hero, you know. Not like Buffy is, anyway," she said loudly.

"Aaaahh!" the Doctor screamed at being startled and nearly fell over the railing surrounding the center console. He got both his hearts out of his throat and peered around the console to look at her. "Err…how long have you been standing there?" he asked timidly.

"Long enough," Faith told him. She finished walking up the catwalk to the console. The Doctor worked his way around the console, tinkering with repairs that didn't need to be done. Faith leaned back on one of the sections, blocking his path. "What was it that was so bad you think I'll turn tail and run?" she asked him. The Doctor turned his eyes to the ground in shame and didn't answer her. Faith put her hand on his and said softly, "How about I tell you why I'm not a hero and then if you decide _you_ still want to be with me, I get to hear what you're so ashamed of. Then I'll get to make up my own mind. Deal?"

The Doctor looked into her hazel eyes, so full of compassion. "It's a deal," the Doctor said.

"Let's see…the first man I killed was an accident, but I tried to blame it on Buffy," Faith said. "I could blame it on my shitty childhood or the emotional cluster fuck of watching my original watcher getting ripped in two by a vampire, but the truth of the matter is I was simply fucked up," she told the Doctor. "After that, it was all downhill. I went to work for the Mayor who wanted to become a demon and live forever. The really sad part about that was he was the best father I ever had. He loved me as a daughter and I would have done anything to get his approval. He gave it to me even when I didn't succeed on a mission. I still mourn for the guy," Faith said.

Faith was watching for any kind of reaction from the Doctor. His boyish aspect was gone and she was looking into the face of a man with nearly a thousand years of life experience. He wasn't judging her, he was listening and understanding. The mention of being a father made him wince slightly. "_Oh god, he's lost a child,_" Faith realized by the sharp look of pain that crossed his face. She decided to move on.

"I killed things for the Mayor. Eventually I even tried to kill B, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I didn't fight as hard as I could and I let her take my knife away from me," Faith said. "B gutted me and I fell off the rooftop. I was in a coma for quite a while. Things got weird from there," she said. "When I woke up, I went looking for revenge. One thing led to another and eventually I made it to LA were I found Angel."

"Who's Angel?" the Doctor asked, hoping it wasn't one of the stone variety.

"He's another vampire with a soul," Faith told him. She held up her hand to keep him from asking any questions. "We'll talk about that later. Anyway, I had sunk lower than I thought possible. I was screwing anything that would put out and provoking fights just so I could beat the dog piss out of someone. I must have had at least five different agencies and over a hundred freelancers looking to kill me," she said. "Angel had been the only person who had never given up on me and had always believed that there was still some good left deep inside. I went to him because I wanted a friend to be the one to kill me, rather than some nameless mope in a back alley," Faith explained.

The Doctor took Faith's hand and squeezed. He didn't give her any platitudes about suicide being wrong or that things always got better. He knew better. The Doctor was living proof.

"Angel was able to breakthrough and get me to realize that I had a responsibility to try to make up for what I had done," Faith said. "B even forgave me up to a point. I turned myself into the police to serve my time for killing the guy that started it all," she finished. "Now it's your turn," Faith told the Doctor.

The Doctor let go of Faith's hand and he let his drop to his side. "How many people do you think Spike has killed? Hundreds…maybe a thousand?" he asked. Faith shrugged her shoulders. "If you take every vampire that has ever been on this planet and total up all of the people they have killed, I still have them beat," the Doctor said. Faith's eye grew wide as she tried to process the sheer numbers he was talking about. "Those who come from the Darkness call me the Destroyer of Worlds. The last word is a plural, Faith. I've destroyed entire planets," he said.

"Anya tried to tell me about that," Faith said. "She said you destroyed a planet full of demons called Da'licks who wanted to take over the Universe. Doesn't sound so terrible to me," she said.

"They were called Daleks," the Doctor corrected her. "They were the mortal enemy of every race in the Universe, especially my own. They wanted to wipe out any other life other than their own and they possessed the ability to Time travel, just like we did," he said. "It fell to us, as the inventors of Time travel to try and stop them. That war I fought in, the one I told you about, it was the final war against them," the Doctor said. "It was called the Time War and entire species were wiped from existence. Not just killed, but never having existed in the first place. The war raged on for years. In the end, we lost," he said sadly.

Faith looked around and pinched her arm. "I'm still here, so unless Daleks came in a variety of flavors, I guess something happened," she said.

The Doctor gave Faith a weak smile. "The entire Dalek fleet converged on my home world to force us to surrender. I was off planet at the time," he said. He paused and tears flowed down his cheeks. "I saw on the monitors the Daleks moving through the cities, killing everyone they could. I watched from above as the Cruciform fell," the Doctor said, his words faltering. "I knew that if they made it all the way to the Citadel's dome and took control of the Eye of Harmony, the Daleks would finally have complete control over the Universe." The doctor took a deep breath and continued. "I used my mental link with the Hand of Omega, which by then had returned to Gallifrey, and activated it. Before anyone could react, Time Lord or Dalek, I sent the Hand of Omega into Kasterborous prime," the Doctor said. His body was wracked with silent sobs. "I watched the twin suns flash over into supernovas and the fire sweep over Gallifrey and burn away both the Daleks and the Time Lords from the Universe. There were over a billion of my people still on the planet," he said. The Doctor had to sit on the airline chair he had installed on the railing.

Faith stood still as she processed what he said. "How many of your kind are left?" she asked him.

The Doctor gestured towards the Time Rotor. "You're looking at us," he said, the loneliness echoing in his voice.

"Oh Fuck no," Faith swore. "_The Powers That Be are bunch of Fucking assholes! This guy sacrifices his very soul so that the rest of us can have a shot at living and he ends up being alone?_" Faith thought. "No Fucking way!" she said aloud. The Doctor stood to leave, taking her statements as a rejection. Faith rushed him and grabbed his jacket, spinning him to face her. "Don't think for one second I am letting you go this alone, Mister!" she yelled. Faith pulled the Doctor down to her so she could kiss the man others had labeled the Lonely God. The Doctor kissed her back with equal passion.

The Doctor was the one who broke the kiss. "So…ah…do you still want to see where my bedroom is?" he asked with an impish grin.

"Finally!" Faith said with an exaggerated sigh. She linked her hand with the Doctor's as he led her down the other catwalk. The doors opened for them. Faith looked back at the center console and winked. The center column flashed blue for an instant back.

The Doctor led Faith to the hallway that now had a branch that led to the right as well. "That wasn't there before," Faith said.

"Yes it was," the Doctor said. "It was hidden by a high powered perception filter. Now that you know it's there, you will always be able to see it, but others will walk right by it," he said with a grin.

Faith grinned back at him. "So all this time you were just down the hall?" she asked. She punched him the arm, causing him to rub the sore spot. "I drug your ass all the way down that hallway when I could have just stopped here?" she pointed out.

"Oops?" the Doctor offered.

The Doctor opened the door and motioned her in. Faith walked in, not knowing what to expect the bedroom of such a complex personality would look like. The walls were colored the same as the center control room. A large four poster bed was in the center of the room. Pictures ranging from grainy black and whites to moving 3-D were hung around the room. One picture frame in particular caught her eye. It had space for 13 photos and 10 were taken up. The Doctor's photo was the last one in line and there were three empty places left. Faith recognized some of the other men in the photos from the faces the Other had worn. She was soon distracted by the Doctor coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. He kissed her ear.

"That's my self portrait frame," the Doctor said. "All those blokes, those were all me," he said.

"Huh?" Faith asked. She leaned back into the Doctor's embrace.

"It's a way a Time Lord cheats death," the Doctor told her. "When we die, the power of the Vortex gets channeled through a special process that converts it into regeneration energy. We end up with a new body and a slightly different personality, most of the time. Catch is we only get to do it 12 times," he explained. The Doctor let go of Faith with his left arm. He pointed to the old man with white hair at the far left of the frame. "That is where I started, and this is where I am now," he said moving his hand to his current photo.

Faith leaned forward to look closer at the photos. She started giggling. "Wow, you really needed someone to tell you were dressing like a total dork during most of those lives," she said. "And don't get me started on the hair," she laughed.

"Oi, I wasn't that bad. Well, Ok 2 had no fashion sense what so ever and I've never been a ginger, but come on, give me a break," he pleaded.

Faith looked back at the photos. "You call them by numbers?"

"Yeah, it makes it easier to keep track of us," he said.

Faith nodded her head in understanding. She reached up and tapped the fifth Doctor's photo. "You know, 5 is kinda cute," she said. Faith turned around and unbuttoned the front of the Doctor's suit coat. "But not as cute as 10," she told him. Faith helped him take the jacket off and tossed it onto a chair near the bed. The two of them took turns taking items of clothing off one another. Faith was completely nude long before the Doctor, for once making him wonder about wearing so many layers.

When Faith finally removed the last article of the Doctor's clothing she was grinning like the Cheshire Cat. The Doctor definitely had all the parts a human had, just in slightly larger proportions. The Doctor took her hand and gently led her to his bad. He pulled back the covers and slid into bed, beckoning Faith to join him. She joined him, draping her body over his. They kissed again and began a slow exploration of each other's bodies.

The lights were off and Faith had her head on the Doctor's chest. She was listening to the steady four beat rhythm of his hearts. They had made love several times that night, each time better than the one before, which was saying something. Faith caught her line of thought and smiled. Yes, she had finally made love to man and not just fucked. She may only have one heart to give compared to his two, but she had had given it to this wonderful alien.

**One of Sunnydale's Cemeteries**

Buffy and Spike roamed the empty cemetery on the nightly patrol. It was Faith's turn in the lineup, but Buffy knew Faith and the Doctor deserved a night together. If her and Willow's plan worked out, they would attack the Hellmouth the next day and odds were she and Faith wouldn't be making it out alive. Buffy looked over at Spike and her heart fell. She had finally come to recognize how much she actually loved the 150 year old juvenile delinquent. Buffy planned on making the patrol a quick one and get Spike back into her own bed to show him how much she loved him.

"Um…Buffy?" Spike called out.

"Yeah," Buffy said.

"Do you remember a big whopping pyramid crypt being here before?" Spike asked, a little confused. He was standing next to a large crypt built to look like an Egyptian pyramid. Ivy had grown over the sides and other signs of decay showed that it had been there for a very long time.

"Huh?" Buffy said, surprised. She had been through that cemetery thousands of times before and had never seen that crypt before that night.

"Yeah, that's what I said," Spike agreed with her inarticulate grunt. "You know, in the movies, something bad always happens when the heroes find the strange pyramid and go poking about. Reckon we should just leave this one alone and drop by town for a pint?" he asked Buffy. There was a tense silence until both of them broke out laughing. Buffy punched Spike in the arm with her free hand that wasn't holding Storm's Fury. Spike was wiping away tears of laughter.

"Right," Spike said, trying to get himself under control. "Here we go then," he said as he kicked in the door to the pyramid crypt. Spike bowed and made a sweeping motion in front of the door with his hand.

"Why thank you, Spike. It's always nice to have a man open a door for a lady," Buffy said. She walked into the pyramid and found the inside was lit by several candles and torches placed at regular intervals around the room. The ceiling was held up by four, stone square pillars.

An old woman in a flowing dress stepped out from behind one of the pillars. "I'd forgotten…I'd forgotten how young you would be," the old woman said. She looked down at the Scythe Buffy was holding. "Comes from the waiting. Mind plays tricks. I see you've found our weapon," she said.

"You mean Storm's Fury? Yeah, I found it. What do mean _our_ weapon?" Buffy asked the old woman.

The old woman looked surprised at the use of the Scythe proper name. "You have spoken with the Other?" she asked hopefully.

"Yes…he is a crazy old prick that stabbed my sister Slayer with Storm's Fury," Buffy said. She was starting to run out of patience.

Spike put his hand on Buffy's shoulder. "Pet, she doesn't smell right. Sorta like the Doctor. Not human," he told Buffy.

"Who are you?" Buffy asked.

"One of many. Well…time was. Now I'm alone in the world," the old woman said sadly.

Buffy gave the woman a hard look. "So what are you? Some kind of ghost?" she asked.

The old woman chuckled and straightened her back. "Nope. I'm as real as you are. Just…well…let me put it this way— I look good for my age. Well maybe not as good as the help from beyond that has arrived recently," the old woman said winking. "But still pretty damn good all things considered," she said. The old woman held out her hands and Buffy handed her Storm's Fury. "You pulled it out of the rock, yes? I was one of those who put it in there, ages ago," the old woman said.

Spike raised his hand. "Is it all right if a bloke asks a question?" Spike asked. The old woman nodded. "What was with the sword in the stone routine?"

"After what the Shadow men did to corrupt the original purpose of Storm's Fury, we hid it to keep it out of their hands. The Shadow men were…" the old woman said.

Buffy interrupted the old woman. "Yeah…met those guys. Didn't really care too much for them," she said.

"Ahh, yes. Then you know. The Shadow Men became the watchers. And the watchers watched the Slayers. But we were sent by the Other to keep watch on you as well," the old woman said. "I am the last of the Guardians. The Great Vampires destroyed our world and those of us left volunteered to come to Earth to keep an eye on the Other's Slayers," she explained.

"How come we never knew about you before this?" Buffy asked. "A little bit of help sure could have come in handy a death or two ago," she said tersely.

"There are rules that are place that limit our involvement. Rules that even the Doctor can not break without impunity," she said. The old woman handed back Storm's Fury. "This is a powerful weapon. Use it wisely and perhaps you can beat back the rising dark. One way or another, it can only mean an end is truly near," the old woman said.

The old woman's face took on a surprised expression and blood started to pour out of her mouth. A foot of dark colored metal was sticking out of chest. "I'm sorry. I didn't catch that last part. Did she say the end is near... or here?" Caleb joked as he pushed the dead woman off the end of his dark colored sword. The blade reflected light in a way that screamed wrongness.

"Oh look, it's the guy who likes altar boys," Spike taunted.

Caleb gave Spike a warm smile. Buffy swung Storm's Fury at him and he dodged the blow, rolling under it. Caleb trapped the blade against the wall with his sword and punched Buffy in the face, knocking her into the far wall. Instead of following up with another attack, Caleb just stood there. "Now here is where it gets a might confusing, darling," Caleb said. "You see, I done got a vision last night from one of the Powers That Be (seems that someone isn't too fond of you up there) and it showed me how this fight ends up," he said. Caleb unconsciously made a defensive covering of his groin with his free hand. "So if you don't mind, I'm just gonna mix things up a bit and exit out the back. See y'all later," Caleb said as he turned and ran out the back of the pyramid.

Spike looked in the direction of where the false priest had run off. "Ok then, I think that guy qualifies as the most annoying bloke I'm going to meet all evening," Spike said.

"Hello, Buffy," Angel said from the doorway to crypt. The tall vampire was standing silhouetted by the moon in his usual black trench coat and black jeans. He looked every bit as attractive as when he walked out of Sunnydale after her High School graduation.

"Nope, I was wrong," Spike said sourly.


	7. Chapter 7

Author's Note: Some of the dialogue in this chapter comes directly from the BtVS episode "Chosen". Some of it has been modified to fit this story.

**The Doctor's Faith Healing  
Chapter 7**

**Pyramid Crypt**

Angel leaned on the door frame and gave Buffy one of his heart stopping smiles. "Miss me?" he asked the woman he still loved.

Buffy stared into his eyes and was caught up in the memories of the love they had shared. "Angel, what are you doing…Don't even. I just want to bask," Buffy said, smiling at Angel. Spike gave a loud cough that sounded suspiciously like "wanker". Buffy gave Spike a dirty look and then smiled at Angel again. "OK, I'm basked. What are you doing here?" she asked Angel.

Angel looked around the room suspiciously. "Not saving the damsel in distress, that's for damned sure," he said. "I have the strangest feeling like I'm missing something," Angel said.

"As usual, you are," Spike said, lighting up a cigarette. "The Big Bad's henchman said we were supposed to have a grand old fight, but some ponce with the PTB clued him in. The altar boy buggering bastard turned tail and ran," he said, filling in his grandsire.

"What? Why would the Powers do that?" Angel asked.

"Caleb said that one of them has a bone to pick with our Buffy here," Spike said. He unconsciously took a step towards Buffy, wanting to protect her from wherever the next threat might come. Angel picked up on the subtle body language. "Buffy, do you mind if we talk outside…alone," Angel said.

"Anything you have to say to Buffy you can say in front of me, we are…" Spike said.

Buffy put up her hand to cut Spike off. "Sure Angel," she said. Buffy looked Spike in the eyes. "I'll be back soon and we'll go over…what we went over last night," Buffy said.

Spike caught the hidden meaning and perked up. He practically vibrated with happy energy. "Yeah, well you two go off and have a nice chat. I'll be waiting back at the house then. Nice seeing you again, Angel," Spike said cheerfully. He even waved at Angel with all five fingers as he walked past him.

Angel watched Spike leave, totally confused at the sudden change in behavior. He turned to Buffy and said, "I…uh…have something for you." Angel reached into his coat pocket and took out a large silver pendant. In the center of the pendant was a large crystal.

Buffy shook her head in dismay. "I can already tell you, I have nothing that goes with that," she told Angel.

"It's not for you," Angel said.

"Huh?" Buffy asked.

"I was told that it's very powerful and probably very dangerous. It has a purifying power, a cleansing power, and well, possibly scrubbing bubbles. The translation on that part was a little iffy, uh—anyway, it bestows strength to the right person who wears it," Angel told Buffy.

"Ok, and the lucky lotto winner is…?" Buffy asked

Angel smiled at her sarcastic nature. He missed her so much. "Someone with a soul, but not entirely human. A champion. You know, me," Angel said.

"Or me, or Faith, Spike, or probably even the Doctor," Buffy said in response.

"You guys have a doctor on your team now?" Angel asked.

"Long story," Buffy said. "He's a…well he's a…never mind. You wouldn't believe me if I told you and I don't have time to explain it all anyway. Let's just say he's the ace up our sleeve," she said. "Point is, anyone of us could wear that thing," Buffy told him.

"Not anyone, Buffy," Angel corrected her. "No. I don't know nearly enough about this to risk you wearing it. Besides, you got that real cool axe-thing going for you," he said.

"Storm's Fury," Buffy said. Angel looked up into the cloudless night and then back at Buffy, a question in his eyes. "That's the name of the Scythe, Storm's Fury. It was built a really long time ago with the sole purpose of killing vampires with a lot more street cred than what we normally get around here," Buffy said.

"See, it even has a cool name. I get to keep the amulet and wade into the fight by your side," Angel said, laying his hand on her shoulder.

Buffy brushed Angel's hand off. "No. You're not gonna be in this fight," she told him.

"Why the hell not?" Angel asked indignantly.

"'Cause I can't risk you," Buffy said. She leaned against a tombstone and looked into the night sky, wondering if she would ever see another one again.

Angel stood in front of her, pain on his face. "You need me in this, Buffy. Let me help," he asked.

Buffy looked in the direction of her house, where her sister slept, the potentials were probably up getting weapons ready, and Faith was busy seducing an alien. She shook her head. _"Only in Sunnydale,_" she thought. Buffy put her small hand on Angel's arm. She spoke softly. "If I lose…if this thing gets past Sunnydale, then it's days…maybe hours…before the rest of the world goes. I need a second front, and I need you to run it," Buffy told the first man she had ever loved.

Angle put his hand over hers. "There's something else, isn't there?" he asked. Angel leaned down and took a long sniff near Buffy's neck. "Is it Spike? You're not telling me something. It's his scent, I remember it pretty well," Angel said.

"You vampires. Did anybody ever tell you the whole smelling people thing's a little gross?" Buffy asked in annoyance. "Are you gonna sniff my butt next? I did not just say that out loud, did I?" Buffy asked, embarrassed that her mouth had kept in time with her thoughts.

Angel ignored the butt remark. "Is he your boyfriend?" Angel asked.

Buffy paused and thought about what to say. She looked into her heart and tried to think of what she should tell Angel, someone she still cared for. In the end, she decided the truth was the best. "Yes," she said quietly.

Angle rocked back as if he had been slapped. "You in love with him? OK, maybe I'm outta line, but this is kind of a curve ball for me. I mean, we are talking about Spike here," Angel said incredulously.

"It's different. He's different. He has a soul now," Buffy told him.

"Oh…well…that's different," Angel said, stunned.

"He's changed, Angel, and he'll make a difference," Buffy said.

Angel turned his back on Buffy and muttered to himself. "That's great. Everyone's got a soul now. You know, I started it. The whole having a soul. Before it was all the cool new thing," he said.

"Oh, my God. Are you 12?" Buffy asked, exasperated.

"I'm getting the brush off for Captain Peroxide. It doesn't necessarily bring out the champion in me," Angel said moodily.

"Don't be that way, Angel" Buffy pleaded.

"Send my best to Giles and the rest of the gang. I'll try to set up a defense, just in case; but I'm not sure what we can do if you fall," Angel said truthfully. He hugged Buffy. "I'm going to head back to LA now and practice my brooding," he joked. "One thing, Buffy," he said.

"What?" Buffy asked.

"If things don't work out between you and the poet from hell, you know where to find me," he offered.

Buffy smiled. "You never know what time may bring," she said.

Angel walked backwards into the shadows, satisfied with the answer. The last words he spoke in Sunnydale as he faded from sight were, "I ain't getting any older."

**TARDIS – Interior**

The next morning, the Scoobies, Buffy and Spike gathered in the TARDIS kitchen for what could possibly be their last breakfast together. Anya looked around at the somber faces. "Is it too late to ask the Doctor for a lift out of here?" she asked. Xander kicked her under the table causing her to say, "Ouch." The comment made Buffy give a long look over at Dawn who was deep in thought.

"Not a good idea, pet," Spike said to Buffy. "She's likely to sneak a stun gun onboard the TARDIS and make the Doctor pilot her back here and then where would you be?" he asked. "Shipping her off might work if she were a mental void like Harmony, but…"

"What?" Dawn said suddenly, turning to look at Spike.

"Um…just talking with Buffy, Dawn," Spike said.

Dawn looked slightly confused. "I'm sorry, I thought I heard my name just now," she said.

_"Poor niblet, she still must not be getting any sleep. Harmony doesn't sound a thing like Dawn,"_ Spike thought. Truth was Dawn had gotten more rest in the TARDIS than she had in the last year.

"I was just saying that those of us who don't want to battle it out at the Hellmouth should have an exit strategy, that's all. I'm not saying it's me," Anya said, defending herself. She reached across the table and grabbed her lover's hand. "Xander, wherever you go, I'm going as well," she said firmly.

Buffy decided to change the subject. "Hey Will, how is plan multiply and conquer going?" Giles shuddered at the horrendous misquote.

Taking a deep breath, Willow looked around nervously at her friends. "I think the spell is possible, but I don't know if I can do it," she admitted. A brief image of the Doctor fighting off theater patrons for her flashed through her mind. Willow squared her shoulders. "Screw that!" Willow swore. The others were taken aback by the usually timid Willow's sudden behavior change. "I can do it, because you guys are depending on me!" she said firmly.

"Bravo, Willow," Giles said proudly.

The conversation was halted by the arrival of the last two members of the war council, Faith and the Doctor. The Doctor was looking especially chipper and Faith had a smile on her face. Faith let the Doctor get a few steps in front of her and she made eye contact with Buffy. Faith extended her fist in and out at her waist quickly in the sign of total success. She mouthed the word, "Yes," at the same time. Spike had the unfortunate luck of watching this and had to try and keep from laughing when the Doctor sat down with some toast and a cup of tea. Buffy got up and joined Faith in the kitchen proper, giving in to the urge to be a young woman and gossip.

Both Spike and the Doctor watched as the women they had slept with last night compare notes in the kitchen. The men were under no illusions as to what the women were talking about. "So, Doctor, how have you been?" Spike said, trying for small talk.

"Good…good. You, Spike?" the Doctor replied, totally uncomfortable in the new situation.

"Very well, thank you," Spike said. Spike and the Doctor turned to face away from the kitchen, when both Faith and Buffy started using their hands to describe the events of the previous evening. Giles looked up from his traditional English breakfast; saw the odd hand gestures of the two Slayers, and the looks of embarrassment on Spike and the Doctor's face. Giles quickly took off his glasses to clean them so he had an excuse not to see anything more.

Wanting to keep the small talk going, the Doctor wracked his brain for anything to say that wouldn't sound like a double entendre. He couldn't think of anything, so he settled for, "Anything new happen overnight?"

"Nah, pretty much just good old fashioned, sweaty…oh, you meant…uh, yeah, Angel stopped by for a visit," Spike said. He pulled out the large silver amulet from his hip pocket. "He dropped this off and said a non-human champion needed to wear this into the battle," he said. He handed it over to the Doctor. "Don't know exactly what it is, but old Captain hair gel said it was important."

The Doctor put on his "brainy specs" and turned the amulet over in his hands. His brows creased in concentration. The women joined them at the table.

"What's ya' got there, Doc?" Faith asked.

The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and ran it over the amulet, not responding to Faith. He held the amulet to his mouth, stuck out his tongue, and took a long lick of the surface. "Hum…that's odd," he said to himself.

"Eeeeew," Buffy and Faith said together. "He did not just do that?" Buffy asked rhetorically.

The Doctor handed the amulet back to Spike who picked up a napkin and wiped down the outside. "I would very careful with that thing, Spike," the Doctor said. "It's an old solar capacitor from Skaro," he said. "This one has been jury rigged with a set of triggers to set off the energy discharge rather explosively. The first trigger is a rather convoluted DNA scanner. It is set to scan for human DNA, however it will only flip that switch if the reading is at least partially negative," the Doctor explained.

Spike put the amulet down on the table. "What is the other trigger?" he asked.

"That is the really odd part," the Doctor said. "The second switch is a simple altimeter set to trigger once it gets a certain number of meters below sea level," he said.

"What does a solar capacitor do?" Buffy asked, afraid she already knew the answer. She had always pretended to be dumb to throw people off.

"This particular model isn't very efficient. If I were to hazard a guess I would say that it stores about one to two weeks of direct sunlight and then releases it in a matter of minutes,' the Doctor said.

"Bloody hell!" Spike said. "How about you call up Angel and tell him he can wear the bloody thing after all?" Spike complained.

The Doctor pulled out a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wrapped the amulet up in it. He started to put the package in his pocket when Spike grabbed his arm. "Hold on there, mate. That still belongs to me. If the time comes and I need to use it, I want to have that option available to me," Spike said. A single tear slid down Buffy's cheek.

The Doctor grabbed Spike's shoulder. "Brave, beautiful, brilliant Spike," he said, smiling.

"Doctor, there is something we need to talk about," Buffy said.

Conversation at the table died and all eyes turned towards them. Faith reached under the table and took the Doctor's hand. "Doc, there is a very good chance that we won't succeed today. I sent Angel back to La to set up a second line of defense in case we fail," Buffy said.

"Wise strategy," the Doctor said. "Most of the time I forget to set up contingencies," he admitted.

"If Angel falls, then the Earth is doomed and you will have to draw the line in the sand for the rest of the Universe," Faith told the Doctor. The Doctor turned to look at Faith, betrayal written on his face. "Last night was the best night of my entire life," she said. "But it was just one night, and you are the only one who can clean up the mess for good if the Earth falls. You know that," Faith told him.

"You can't ask me to do that again," the Doctor begged her, anguish evident in his voice.

"The Other said you have to take up the mantle of Time Lord Victorious, whatever the hell that means," Buffy said. "I'm guessing that means you're going to have to make a terrible decision," she said.

The Doctor let go of Faith's hand and stood away from the table. He threw his napkin on the plate in front of him. "Yes, it tells me everything," he said sourly. "If you will all excuse me, I would like to be alone in the control room so I can run through some scenarios uninterrupted," the Doctor said. He walked out of the kitchen and off to the control room.

Faith couldn't bring herself to look at the Doctor as he left, afraid of the hurt she would see. She hadn't told him the full reason she had wanted him off the planet. Faith wasn't sure that his regenerative abilities would be enough to come back from a battle with hell itself, and she couldn't stand the thought of seeing the man she was falling in love with die.

The Doctor stormed into the control room, slamming the door behind him. He glared at the Time Rotor and gave the center console a swift kick. The Doctor was hopping around, holding his foot and didn't see Spike enter the room.

"Yep, you got Slayeritus bad, Doc," Spike said.

The Doctor spun around on one foot and fell over backwards. When he got back up he was glaring at Spike. "I've got what?" he asked.

"Slayeritus. Don't feel bad. I've had a chronic case for quite a while now," Spike told him. "No cure you know. Not that either of us really wants one," he said. Spike walked up the catwalk to the center console and then leaned against the railing. "Slayeritus is when you love one of those impossible girls with their bloody super powers and mood swings to equal them," Spike laughed. He pulled out a flask from his jacket and took a swig. Spike offered the Doctor a drink, but he politely refused with a shake of his head.

"Look here, I've only known Faith for couple of days, and…well…I…" the Doctor spun around and leaned back on the railing next to Spike. "They really are impossible aren't they?" he asked Spike.

"I think it comes from some rot Buffy was told during a vision quest, 'Death is Your Gift' someone told her," Spike said. "All the Slayers see is death and destruction every moment of their lives. They're either trying to prevent some nasty from spreading it or they're dealing it out themselves," he said. "The Slayers become so used to it, that they start looking at the people they meet in terms of when they're going to have to bury them; even the blokes they're bumping uglies with," Spike said.

"That's horrible," the Doctor exclaimed. Then he thought back to how he went through periods of shunning contact with people because he knew he would just have to watch them die while he lived on and on.

"Right, now comes along two blokes like us and that has them confused like a football on the cricket pitch," Spike said. "And just like anyone else, when they get confused, they get grumpy and have a tendency to push people away. Trust me, I spent the last 18 months being pushed away by Buffy," Spike said.

"What is there to be confused about?" the Doctor asked.

"Like I said, most normal blokes have an expiration date on them," Spike said. "Me, I'm already dead and from what Anya tells me, you are very difficult to keep dead. That has the Slayers confused and makes them say and do stupid things," he said. Spike put his hand on the old alien's shoulder. "Doc, what I'm trying to say is you just need to keep on going after Faith until she sees the light and realizes that keeping you around is easier than pushing you away," Spike chuckled and then took another drink.

"Thank you, William," the Doctor said.

**Summers House**

Faith watched as the TADIS dematerialized in front of her. She heard Dawn sob a few times and then get a hold of herself. For Faith's part, she had managed enough courage to kiss the Doctor goodbye. She had looked into his eyes for what she suspected to be the last time and saw that he had forgiven her. That was almost more than she could bear. Faith could have dealt with the Doctor being angry, or even sullen; but having him look at her with those loving, brown eyes made her want break down. She hadn't broken down since her first watcher had been killed. Faith was a little pissed that someone had managed to get through her armor. "_At least the guy who did it is so damned cute,"_ Faith thought.

Buffy called the potentials into the now much more roomy living room and spoke to them. "The First Evil those backing it expects us to just stand by and wait for an apocalypse. I say that we're tired of waiting and bring the apocalypse to them," Buffy said. "Evil has always existed and will always try to use our fears against us, but it is time to face our fears and shove them past the Hellmouth, right down the First's throat," she said. "They want us to believe there isn't anything stronger than Evil, but there is. We are. We always have been. That is why the First attacks us with visions and illusions," Buffy told them.

"Today we are going into battle, but for the first time, we have a chance of doing it as a sisterhood of Slayers instead of just one Slayer and a list of girls waiting for her to die," she told them. Buffy held out Storm's Fury. "One of the Doctor's people made this a long time ago. He sent it to us so we could follow in his footsteps, as vampire killers," she said loudly. "Storm's Fury doesn't just belong to _the_ Slayer," Buffy told them. "It belongs to every vampire Slayer, every girl who shares in the Other's heritage and calling, and today we are going to get rid of the spell that was put on Storm's Fury so you can take your rightful places as Slayers next to Faith and I," she said proudly.

Vi raised her hand. "You mean the whole nine yards. Super strength and everything?" she asked.

"The Other set it up so that every Slayer could tap into the powers of Storm's Fury equally," Faith said. "It was those old shriveled pricks that later became the watchers that screwed you guys over," she said.

"Cool," Vi said.

Kennedy raised her hand for once. She already knew what her part in the plan was. She was going to protect Willow with her life, no matter what anyone else said. Buffy nodded to Kennedy. "I got a question that I know you, our most illustrious leader, forgot to plan for," she taunted.

Faith took in a deep breath, getting ready for another argument. "What would that be?" Buffy asked.

"Considering that you and Willow came up with this plan together, it only leaves one question to ask. Where are we going to eat when we get done?" she asked, winking at Buffy. The other potentials laughed and the tension left the room.

A horn beeped loudly outside. Vi pulled back the curtain and looked outside to see Xander had pulled up in a red double-decker bus. He ran inside the house, leaving the engine running. Buffy looked out at the bus and raised her eyebrows. "Hey, it looked way cooler than a school bus," he said.

"Whatever," Buffy said. She turned to the potentials and said, "Mount up!" Spike hurried outside, his heavy wool blanket draped over his head, smoke curling up from around the edges. The rest of the group (potentials, Slayers, and Scoobies) got onto the bus. Xander drove them to the new Sunnydale High School.

**Sunnydale High School**

Spike led the potentials down into the basement, leaving Buffy, Dawn, and the Scoobies in the entry way of the school. "Well, I suppose this is it, isn't it," Giles said, cleaning his glasses. He had dropped his bag of wooden stakes at his feet and laid the sword he had carried in on the wall.

"Yep, guess it is," Xander said. His crossbow was next to his feet and his axe was slung across his back.

"Oh for crying out loud!" Anya complained. "Will the two of you just hug so we can get to our positions," she ordered. "I'd like time to have sex with Xander one more time before we all die," Anya complained.

Giles looked at Anya, horrified. Xander was equally appalled, just not about the sex part. The two men looked at each other and shook hands. "See you on the other side, G-Man," Xander said.

"Yes, quite," Giles said formally. Willow raced over and hugged her mentor and then Xander before she and Kennedy headed off to the Principal's Office. Willow carried Storm's Fury across her chest.

Buffy looked sternly at Dawn. "Stay with Giles. If you get killed, I'm telling," she warned her sister.

Buffy looked at Giles. "I will protect her with my very life," he promised. Buffy shook her head, trying to keep the tears from coming. Giles took her in his arms and muttered into her hair. "I will always think of you as my daughter and you will always have my love," he told her.

Buffy stepped back and turned towards Dawn. "Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid,' she told her. Dawn saluted.

Buffy made her way to the basement to join the others. When she reached the seal room, she took out a knife and drew the blade across her palm. She let a thin stream of blood drop onto the seal. Buffy passed the knife to Faith who did the same thing. Each potential did the same until the knife made its way to Spike, who made a deep cut across his forearm and a generous amount of blood flowed onto the seal. The seal sprang open and spun away. Buffy and Faith dropped into the hole and Spike lowered the potentials down. He dropped in after them once he lowered the last girl down.

The small attack force made up of a vampire with a soul, two Slayers, and a handful of girls, made their way slowly down a tunnel until they came to an opening. The opening in the tunnel led to a ledge that overlooked a huge cavern. It was the same ledge the Slayers had their audience with the Other on. "Like I said, you take the million on the left and I'll take the million on the right," Faith whispered to Buffy.

Spike creeped to the edge and looked over. "Bugger me!" he swore under his breath.

"Only if you ask nicely," Caleb said from the mouth of another tunnel. He was leaning on his dark metal sword like a cane. Caleb made a point of looking around the ledge. "Where's your pretty toy, darling? I went and had a weapon of equal power brought in just to make things square," Caleb said. He held up the sword that warped and distorted the reflections along its blade. "This here is Excalibur's brother," Caleb bragged. "Obviously its more misunderstood sibling, but brother none the less," he said sympathetically. Caleb straightened up and put the blade of his sword on his shoulder. With his other hand he motioned for his troops behind him to advance.

The tunnel vomited a mix of Bringers with swords and vicious Turok-Han. While most were bottled up in the tunnel, some managed to engage the attack group, while many others got past Buffy and her friends to get to the open seal. The sea of Turok-Han on the cavern floor below heard the commotion and began swarming up the side of the cliff.

Buffy ran to meet Caleb, but she was cut off by a Bringer and an Uber-Vamp. Buffy didn't break stride and jumped high in the air, letting her momentum turn her in a graceful spinning kick to the Bringers head. There was an audible crack as its neck rotated far beyond what it was supposed to. The Bringer fell and Buffy grabbed the sword it dropped. She winced in pain as the Turok-Han's claws left two long gouges in her arm. Buffy spun around to meet this challenge as Caleb stood by, a smug smile on his face.

Faith pulled out a pair of balanced blades, somewhere between daggers and short swords. She spun around in a tight circle and a Bringer found he was far less useful in the fight without arms. Two more Bringers took its place, but were tossed over the side by a eager Turok-Han, wanting to kill a Slayer. Faith equaled the weight on her feet and then dropped into a low crouch, striking out with her left foot and left hand at the same time. She barely bent the knee of the Turok-Han in the wrong direction, but it was enough for the vampire to lose its balance. As it fell, Faith rotated her left wrist so that the blade would hit the Uber-Vamp straight in the neck. The blade sunk in and she brought her other hand across his neck in a scissor like motion, decapitating him. The Turok-Han turned to dust, freeing her blades. Faith stood and saw even more Uber-Vamps coming their way. She said a silent prayer to whatever deity looked over the Doctor and thanked them for the night they had shared and that he wasn't there to see her end. Faith waded into the wall of vampires, a spinning, kicking, slashing vessel of death. She barely felt the numerous cuts and bruises the Turok–Han were dealing to her body.

"_Willow better hurry,_" Buffy thought. The potentials were standing back to back with Spike acting as a sort of guard dog. They were acting defensively only and all of them had managed to survive so far.

**TARDIS**

The Doctor had moved the TARDIS into a stationary orbit above Southern California. The center column glowed and then dimmed. "Yes, I'm going to miss her too," the Doctor said. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. If he concentrated he could still smell Faith's scent on his jacket. Suddenly, the Doctor's eyes flew open and the look on his face was the same one that had caused whole civilizations to tremble in fear. The Time Rotor glowed a deep crimson in agreement with what the Doctor had decided. The lights dimmed in the control room as the TARDIS made its preparations. The Doctor picked up a phone handset from the console and the TARDIS dialed for him.

"Hello, this is the Doctor," he said to the woman on the other end of the line. "I'm initiating Directive One. Prepare for a download from the TARDIS," the Doctor said and then hung up the phone.

The Doctor began spinning the knobs and wheels on the console as he plotted a return journey to Sunnydale. As he did, he was bumped in the back by a box held aloft on a repulsor sled. The Doctor looked at the box and then at the Time Rotor. He opened the lid and smiled at the contents. "I suppose they won't mind if I use it just this one time. I mean, technically if Sunnydale falls, Great Britain _will_ be in terrible danger," the Doctor rationalized.

**Sunnydale High School**

In the Principal's Office, Willow sat in a circle made of salt. She had Storm's Fury laid across her lap and had her eyes closed. Kennedy had a crossbow in her hands and a sword nearby. She looked anxiously down at Willow. "Aren't you supposed to be chanting or something?" Kennedy asked.

Willow partially opened one eye to give Kennedy a dirty look. "For spells this powerful, there are no words that can contain it," Willow explained. "I have to join with the Scythe and force the magic to do want I want. That is part of why this is so dangerous," she said. Willow closed her eyes again and after a moment muttered, "Aha…got you…they built it just like a firewall…let's see if I can't just…." Wind started to pickup in the tiny office and papers swirled around the room. The overhead light flickered on and off. Gold and red energy glowed from the Scythe and pure white energy glowed from Willow, whose hair had turned ghostly white. A black smoke like cloud rose from Storm's Fury and Willow opened her eyes to look at it. She put her lips together and softly blew, like she was blowing out a birthday candle. The black smoke dissipated instantly. The instant she did, Kennedy felt the change. She had become a Slayer.

The red and gold glow from the Scythe died just as the white glow from Willow did. Willow collapsed to the floor, a beautiful smile on her face. "That was groovy," Willow said softly. She tried to get her vision to clear, but she was too tired. She held out Storm's Fury to Kennedy. "Get this to Buffy," she ordered. Kennedy grabbed the Scythe and ran to join the battle under the Hellmouth. Willow collapsed to floor, unconscious. She had had no knowledge of the hands that picked her up and carried her out of the room.

The battle din was so loud, Faith could barely hear herself shout. She had been knocked to the ground by a Turok-Han that she had repaid by kicking off the cliff. It was too loud for Vi to hear Faith shout out a warning to watch out for the Turok-Han behind her. Faith watched in sadness as the vampire swung his clawed hand at the potential she had trained. Vi's hand snapped up suddenly and she threw her arms behind her in a cross block, trapping the Turok-Han's arm. Vi had moved much faster than a human should have been able to. The new Slayer spun around, twisting the vampire's arm, flipping it to the ground. She drove a steel shod wood stake through its bony chest, turning it to dust. Faith looked around and watched the other newborn Slayers take the offensive.

Faith was watching the new Slayers and getting up on her hands and knees and didn't see Caleb come up on her blind side. He kicked her in the ribs and smashed her into the rock wall. Faith cradled her side and tried to get her breath back. Caleb raised Excalibur's Brother high over his head and then swung it down at her neck; intent on separating Faith's head from the rest of her body. His blade was stopped midway down and the ringing sound made from blade he connected with instead of faith's neck caused all noise in the cavern to cease. Even Buffy, who had just been given Storm's Fury by Kennedy, stopped to stare in wonder.

The Doctor had stopped Caleb's blade with what looked like just a simple sword; one that bore no embellishments or filigree. However, even though it bore no markings of any kind, any soldier of good would recognize it on sight. Buffy had to ask him the question that was on everyone's mind, "Great timing Doc, but isn't that supposed to be stuck in a stone somewhere?"

"I haven't gotten around to putting it in the stone yet," the Doctor said. The Doctor flicked his wrist and pushed Caleb's sword away from Faith. Caleb brought his sword back in line with the Doctor and feinted to see if the Doctor would go for an easy bluff. Instead, the Doctor slowly paced in front of Caleb, keeping his guard up.

"I thought Merlin was the guy who did that?" Vi asked him.

"I haven't gotten around to _being_ him either," the Doctor said like he was checking off things on his to do list. Caleb made the first real strike and the Doctor parried it away. The Doctor riposte and drew a thin line of blood on Caleb's off hand.

"I think _Giles_ is going to have a bigger nerdgasm than Andrew when we tell him," Faith said as she got to her feet. She looked around her and saw that the battle had rejoined for everyone and even more Turok-Han had started climbing over the ledge. The first wave would have made it onto the ledge had it not been for Buffy who took a swing that would have put her at the top of the LPGA tour. Buffy took off four heads and turned them to dust. "Rock on, B!" Faith yelled. Faith looked around and chose a vampire to pick on.

Caleb was scared. He had been told where to find this evil sword and was given a guarantee it would hold up in battle against that dirty whore's little wood chipper. They hadn't mentioned that his sword's older brother was going to show up to the party. "Come to think of it, where the hell does a alien learn to sword fight?" Caleb asked the Doctor as their swords crossed close to each other's faces.

"Common misconception, Caleb," the Doctor said with a humorless smile. "Just because I hate to fight and would rather do anything to avoid it, doesn't mean I'm not any good at it," he said.

Caleb made a face that showed the Doctor had made a good point. Their swords clashed together over and over again. The Doctor was fueled by his indignation at having his lover, not to mention his favorite planet, being threatened. With each passing moment, Caleb's defenses began to weaken. Eventually, the Doctor was able to get Caleb into a sword bind and then pull with his body, yanking the sword out of Caleb's hand.

Caleb dropped to his knees. He put his hands together in front of chest. "Mercy, Doctor. I beg mercy from the Destroyer of Worlds," Caleb pleaded.

The Doctor stepped forward, putting the tip of Excalibur to Caleb's throat. He knew all he had to do was lean forward and the perfect sword would send this man to his death. The Doctor clenched his jaw and took a step back. He could not bring himself to murder an unarmed man who had surrendered. The Doctor pointed down the tunnel Caleb had come from with the sword that would eventually belong to King Arthur. "Go!" he commanded. Caleb got up and ran as fast as he could, glad to escape with his life. The First watched and was not happy.

Xander's aim was still pretty good for only having one eye. He had dropped four Bringers and maimed one Turok-Han. Until that night, Xander hadn't even known Turok-Han had testicles. He had just used his last bolt on neutering the Uber-Vamp and was in the act of tossing the crossbow aside when he saw the Bringer come up behind Anya. Xander's world went into slow motion as he saw the Bringer's sword come up, ready to cut Anya in half. Xander wanted to scream, but he knew he would be too late.

Xander was shocked when the Bringer who was trying to kill Anya spasmed and its head erupted in a gory, red mist. The world sped back up and Xander saw the Bringer fall. Anya spun around just as the sound of automatic gunfire filled the hallway they were in. Several more Bringers dropped dead from similar wounds.

"Huh?" Xander managed to say. He reached over and pulled Anya to him. They watched as two men in dark camouflage and red berets "leap-frogged" down the hallway to them. When they finally reached them, the shorter of the two saluted Xander with a palm forward salute. "Lt. Campbell of UNIT, Sir," he said in a thick Scottish accent. The LT looked around at the dead bodies Xander had caused. "Well done, lad, but it's time to be leaving now," Campbell said. "How many more of you are there?" he asked.

Xander was trying to get over the shock when the now sexless Turok-Han ran down the hallway towards the soldiers. They turned to face it. "Don't!" Xander warned, knowing bullets wouldn't do a thing against the monster. The two soldiers looked at each other and smirked. They reached forward and turned on the flashlights mounted on the underside of their assault rifles. A bright purple glow filled the hallway, causing the Turok-Han to screech in pain and run the other way.

Campbell looked back at Xander, "High intensity UV bulbs," he explained. Xander smacked his forehead, pissed that he hadn't ever thought of that before. "The Doctor said it wouldn't kill them, but it would give us a wee bit of breathing room," he said.

"The Doctor?" Anya asked in wonder.

"Of course, who do you think set up this rescue operation. That bloke is always needing us to bail his friends out of one scrape or another," the other soldier said.

"Now then, how many of you are there and is that red double-decker beastie yours?" Campbell asked Xander with a smile.

Giles' arm was weary from the slashing he was doing, just like the dream he had shared with the Doctor. He and Dawn had accounted for at least 15 Bringers and 3 Turok-Han. He looked over at the blood drenched girl and knew what he would have to do if the Bringers got their hands on her. _"Just don't let it come to that old man,"_ Giles told himself. Just then, he was knocked into a wall when a Bringer jumped on his back. Giles heard Dawn scream and expected everything to be over soon. Instead he felt a warm spray on his neck and then the weight of the Bringer slide off his back. Giles turned around and saw a military "k-bar" knife sticking through the demon's neck. He looked up and was very surprised at who he saw.

"Hello, Ripper," Brigadier General Winifred Bambera said warmly.

"I thought I told you not to get involved, Winnie," Giles protested.

Bambera sighed. She kicked the lifeless corpse at her feet. "Right. Let's go find Ethan and we can see how well your judgment is compared to mine," she said.

"Point well taken," Giles said. He flinched slightly when Bambera dropped to one knee and laid down a controlled burst of fire down one of the hallways. Another soldier with her did the same thing in the opposite direction.

The other soldier tapped an earpiece he was wearing and then spoke to the Brigadier. "Ma'am, Campbell reports he has found two survivors and is pulling them back. Team three has found the girl Rosenberg and already on their way to the extraction point," he said.

"Time to go, Ripper," Bambera said. She pulled Dawn towards her and then put the girl in between the two UNIT officers. As a group they made their way to the front doors of the school.

"Excuse me, Winnie, but how did you get bullets to work on demons? We never had much luck on them," Giles asked in between bursts of gunfire.

"Steel instead of lead," Bambera said simply. "We have special gold ones as well, but the Doctor said we wouldn't be needing them on this extraction," she said.

Giles smiled in thanks for their new friend. "The Doctor, of course," he said, shaking his head.

As they were approaching the end of the hallway, a team of UNIT technicians were busy setting up a tanning booth on its end and pointing it the way they came. They heard the roar of a portable generator start and bright, artificial sunlight spilled down the hall. Dawn's face lit up at the simplicity of the rig. She looked at Giles, the obvious question on her face.

Giles looked at Dawn's reaction and simply said, "No…no…not a word, Dawn. Not one bloody word."

The new Slayers were holding their own, until Amanda was caught off guard and had her neck snapped by one of the evil creatures. The death of their sister Slayer only made the Slayers fight that much harder. Buffy, Faith, and The Doctor stood shoulder to shoulder on the ledge. The sheer number of Turok-Han climbing over the edge of the cliff was wearing even the Slayers down. "This doesn't look good, Doc," Buffy said. Faith turned for an instant and caught the Doctor's eye. In that instant she was glad he had decided to come back for her, even if it meant they would probably both die under the Hellmouth.

"I guess it's time to add some sunshine to this party," Spike said as he pulled the silver amulet out of his pocket. He separated the loop of the chain and was about to put it over his head when the Doctor intervened.

"Whoa…stop…trade me," the Doctor said and tossed Excalibur to the ensouled vampire. Spike was stunned by being offered the legendary sword and wasn't able to react when the Doctor snatched the amulet out of his other hand. "Don't just stand there looking at Excalibur. Go kill something with it, it's what the bloody thing was made for," the Doctor ordered. Spike smiled and let out a war cry as he sliced through the spine of the nearest Turok-Han.

The Doctor had the beginnings of a plan and took out his sonic screwdriver. He ran through several settings and waved the screwdriver over the amulet. He then licked his finger and held it up in the air, testing air currents. The Doctor then licked the amulet again, giving it a healthy dose of non-human DNA. He then rammed the end of his sonic screwdriver into the bottom of the amulet, welding it to the alien metal. The Doctor switched the screwdriver to the new UV flash feature he had used at the Bronze and set it on a 5 second delay.

"Excuse me…pardon me…" the Doctor said pushing his way through the battle as he made his way to the edge of the cliff. When he reached the edge, he tossed the amulet / screwdriver contraption as hard as could out into the abyss. "Spike, get down. There is going to be a huge UV blast in about 3 seconds," the Doctor yelled.

The Turok-Han all stopped to stare at the Doctor. Spike dove further down the tunnel, hoping to get clear of the deadly light blast. Seconds ticked away and nothing happened. Spike poked his head out from the tunnel mouth. The First version of Buffy materialized next to the Doctor who was looking over the edge at where the amulet had landed. The First made a motion with her hand and the Turok-Han froze for a moment. She looked at the Doctor. "That was a little anti-climatic, don't you think?" she taunted him.

"Oops," was all the Doctor said.

"Um…Doc, even way back when I was still alive, that was the one word a bloke never wanted to hear his doctor say," Spike said anxiously.

Faith walked up next to the Doctor after taking advantage of the frozen Turok-Han and staking all the ones on the ledge. The First didn't mind, she had nearly 100,000 more on the cavern floor ready to take their places. "Pleeease tell me you did not just throw away our last chance at beating these shitheads," Faith asked the Doctor.

"Oh no, not at all," the Doctor said. Everyone, including the First looked at him, confused. The Doctor saw their looks of confusion and tried to explain. "You see there were two possible outcomes from the modification that I made to the solar capacitor. There was a 99% chance it would work the way I said it would," he said. He looked back down at the cavern floor. The Turok-Han having swarmed over where the amulet fell, blocking it from view. "It would seem the device decided to go with the other possibility," the Doctor said with a shrug of his shoulders. He started to casually walk away from the ledge.

"And that other possibility would be?" the First demanded.

"Hum? Oh…yes, well you see there was this slight chance that the UV flash from the sonic screwdriver would trigger a neutron cascade in the energy storage cells which would cause a phase compression in the center of the crystal," the Doctor said as if that explained everything. He noticed the blank stares from everyone else. "The center of the crystal is pure hydrogen…the phase compression forces the hydrogen atoms to combine…" he suggested, wanting them to make the connection themselves. The Doctor made a motion with his hands as if he wanted them to finish his sentence.

"'Splainy in English, please," Buffy said.

"Oh, for the love of the Vortex," the Doctor swore. "I just threw a nuclear hand grenade over the ledge that will soon become a very energetic, if somewhat small and very short lived star," he said. Spike raised his hand and hopped up and down. "Yes, Spike," the Doctor said, acknowledging the vampire.

"Ooh…ooh…can I say it this time, please," Spike begged. The Doctor made a grand bow in his direction. "Thanks," Spike said. He cleared his throat and then yelled, "RUN!"

Giles was sitting on the bus next to Winifred Bambera as they drove out of town. He was sitting facing the back of the bus. Giles saw a bright flash of light lance out of the Earth from where the High School was. "Good lord, what was that?" he asked.

Bambera was already on her communicator headpiece before Giles quit speaking. She ran forward and grabbed the back of the driver's seat. "Drive like the devil's behind you, boy!" Bambera ordered Xander. "We just detected a huge explosion underneath Sunnydale. The cavern system below the town is collapsing and the whole town looks like it is going to fall into a gigantic sinkhole," she explained.

Xander didn't even raise an eyebrow. "Yep, that's our Buffy," he said proudly. He did however slam down the accelerator as far as it would go and shifted gears. Xander took the most direct route out of town, which led through a few yards and over several hapless Bringers. Xander spared a glance out the side window. Their escort of Humvees seemed to be having the time of their lives, even if they did look a little silly with tanning booths strapped to their sides. Night wasn't for another couple more hours.

A loud rumble came from the center of town and Giles watched as building after building dropped from sight. "Xander, to quote Buffy, more speed would be of the good right now," he said anxiously. It became a race between the speed of the bus and the rate at which the town fell into the cavity left by the Doctor's accidental fusion bomb. Giles was torn between looking at where they were headed or back at the rapidly approaching line of destruction. He jumped in his seat when debris from a nearby building fell onto the top of the bus as an aftershock from the seismic chaos raced past them.

"Can't this bunny-fucking thing go any faster?" Anya lamented.

"Do you want to drive?" Xander asked, irritated.

Anya, who was sitting in the front seat, just behind the driver's seat, patted Xander on his shoulder. "No dear, you're doing a great job, but if you get us killed; I'm never having sex with you again," she threatened.

Bambera, who was holding onto the metal pole next to the driver shook her head in wonder and asked, "What?"

Xander had no good answer for her so he just concentrated on getting them out of the city. When they reached the highway going out of town, he shifted gears again and was able to gain a little more speed. The bus was nearing the city limit sign when the collapse of the town caught up with them. Their military escort shot past them and the bus rolled past the city limits as the ground fell out from below the rear wheels of the bus.

The collapse of the town halted suddenly at the city limits, letting the momentum of the bus force the rear wheels up and over the edge of the newly created Sunnydale Crater. The impact caused Xander to lose control and the bus ran off the road into the desert surrounding the highway. He slammed on the brakes and heard a terrible crunching noise from the back axle as it collapsed from all of the abuse it had suffered. The bus slid to a halt.

Brigadier Bambera clapped Xander on the shoulder. "Excellent driving young man. I'd be proud to call you one of my own," she said. "UNIT is always looking for young Officers with promise," Bambera offered.

Willow sat up in her chair and looked around. "I had the weirdest dream…we were at Disneyland on a rollercoaster," she said. Willow looked out the window at the welcome to Sunnydale sign and the crater beyond it. "Oh no," was all she was able to get out when she realized how empty the bus was. Dawn moved over to her seat and the girls held each other.

"Buffy is a survivor, so is Faith," Giles said. He looked at the devastation of the crater, trying to convince himself. "Your spell activated the other Slayers and as much as I hate to admit it, they had Spike as well. There is a very good chance they made it out of there in time," he said. Giles turned his face away from the girls so they wouldn't have a chance to see his tears. He doubted he would ever see his "daughter" again. A comforting hand was put on his shoulder. He reached up and covered his old girlfriend's hand with his own.

"You always had such a soft heart, Ripper," Bambera teased him. This caused Giles to look up at her suddenly. "Have hope. There was someone else down there with them. Someone even worse at following good advice than you are," she hinted. Giles jumped out of seat and forced the doors open. He ran to the edge of the crater and strained to see any signs of life. Bambera walked up next to him and offered him a quiet companionship.

A whooshing noise above him drew Giles' eyes upwards. The TARDIS was spinning on its vertical axis and slowly descending towards them. The blue call box landed a few yards off from the bus. The doors open and the new Slayers filed out, followed by Buffy, Faith and the Doctor. Giles could just make out Spike keeping to the shadows inside the TARDIS. All of the humans looked a little sea sick. Giles was able to hear Buffy's voice even from the other side of the bus. "And people say _I_ can't drive!" she complained. Giles was overcome with happiness and turned to Brigadier General Bambera. He took her face in his hands and gave her a chaste kiss on the lips, much to the shock of her troops.

"Ripper! What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?" Bambera demanded.

"Well…you see…I apologize Winnie, I was overcome with emotion, and…" Giles tried to explain.

"You and I do it like this," Bambera said as she threw her arms around Rupert "Ripper" Giles and pulled him into a passionate kiss. The soldiers cheered until Lt. Campbell gave them a dirty look that cut the cheers off like a knife. When he was sure none of the soldiers were in earshot, Campbell muttered a soft, "Bravo, Mum." He smiled warmly at his boss and what he hoped would be her new boyfriend. "_Lord knows the old girl definitely needs one, and if what I saw here today is any indication, I doubt this bloke would bat an eye at the work she would be bringing home,"_ Campbell thought.

After the UNIT medics were politely pushed away for the third time and roughly tossed aside after that (their healing abilities far superior to anything the field medics could offer), Buffy and the new Slayers went in search of the Doctor to offer him their thank. They also went to find him to say goodbye after the nice lady having smoochies with Giles told Buffy the Doctor would be leaving soon. The Slayers found the Doctor standing next to his TARDIS, his expression looking much too tired and "old" for his body. Buffy figured out why when she noticed Faith was nowhere to be seen. "_Damn, the more things change, the more things stay the same_," Buffy thought. "_I guess the guy gets his heart broken in the end after all._"

"Has anyone seen Faith?" the Doctor asked, looking over the shorter human's heads.

Buffy walked up to him and took his hand. "I'm sorry, Doctor. Faith has been through a lot and she is really bad about goodbyes. I think she feels if she leaves first, she doesn't have to deal with them," Buffy told the Doctor.

The Doctor looked down in sadness. He couldn't be angry at Faith. He couldn't count the number of times he had pulled the same stunt on one of his Companions. "I understand," he said. The Doctor forced a smile on his face and shook hands with the Scoobies and Slayers that had assembled to see him off. He refused to return the salute Brigadier Bambera gave him. Her knowing smile told him she didn't really expect him to, but one always had to try.

Spike walked out of the TARDIS, a new wool blanket draped over his head. He flipped part of the blanket over the Doctor's head so Spike could hug the old alien. Spike whispered in the Doctor's ear. "Thank you, mate. I may be dead, but you have given me something to live for," he said. "Oh…and when things get tuff between you and the more sensible Slayer, just remember what I told you," Spike whispered.

"She's not here, Spike," the Doctor said sadly.

Spike looked around the group and simply said, "Yep, your right. She's not."

Spike stepped back, pulling the blanket off of the Doctor's head. The Doctor snapped his fingers. Remembering something. "Buffy, do you have a mobile?" he asked.

"A mobile what?" Buffy replied, confused.

"I believe he is referring to a cell-phone," Giles explained.

"Oh, why didn't he just say that?" Buffy asked. The Doctor and Giles both rolled their eyes. Buffy stuck her tongue out at them while pulling out her cell-phone from her jeans pocket. She tossed it to The Doctor who opened up the back. He pulled out his old sonic screwdriver that the TARDIS had returned to him (seeing as how he had thrown the other one over a cliff.) The Doctor activated the screwdriver and pointed it at the electronics of the phone. After a few seconds he replaced the back and tossed the phone to Buffy.

"You are now the proud owner of a Universal mobile phone," the Doctor said. "You'll get reception just about anywhere, never have to pay a dime for service, and…it can get a hold of me wherever or whenever I am," he told her.

"Thanks, Doc. You wouldn't mind doing that for Dawn's too, would you? Her bill is always way higher than mine," Buffy asked.

"It's just because I have a lot more friends than you do," Dawn taunted her sister as she handed her phone over to the Doctor.

The Doctor made the modification and gave her back the phone. When he did, his hand brushed hers causing a flash of energy unseen to the human eye to leap between them. The Doctor's eyes grew wide in recognition of who / what Dawn was. The flash went both ways and Dawn finally knew who she truly was. They used their combined powers to stop time for a moment. "I'm sorry for what I did. For what I did to you," he whispered.

Dawn stepped forward and hugged the Doctor. She looked up into the Doctor's haunted eyes. "I forgive you," she said. "I would have been their slave if you hadn't. Now look where I am, I have family and friends," Dawn told him.

Dawn looked at the crater that that had swallowed up the town and destroyed the vampire army. She brushed the Doctor's cheek with her hand. "There is still part of the Other inside you, you know," she told the Doctor. "You are still the Time Lord Victorious," Dawn said. She smiled at him. "I know it's terrible for a child to say this, but out of the three of you, you were my favorite father," Dawn told him.

The Doctor hugged Dawn close to him, momentarily letting the Other's memories surface. "Thank you, Harmony," he whispered.

"Let's stick with Dawn. I have a new beginning now," Dawn told the Doctor.

"Dawn it is," he said. "You know you are always welcome with us," the Doctor said, motioning to the TARDIS.

"I know," Dawn said, "But for now I want to spend time with Buffy and the gang learning more about this planet you spent so much time on." They released their hold on time. Dawn gave the Doctor one last hug and went back to stand with her "sister".

The Doctor took one last look for Faith, sighed, and faced the group. "Well that's it, I'm off; all though I have a feeling I'll being seeing you lot again," the Doctor said.

Spike leaned down and whispered something in Buffy's ear. She smiled and then yelled at the Doctor as he shut the door. "Good luck, Doc. Things are going to get real interesting onboard the TARDIS," she said.

The Doctor shut the doors to the TARDIS and didn't hear Buffy's last statement. He leaned his head against the doors for a moment and then turned around to walk up the catwalk to the center console. He froze in mid-step when he saw the solitary figure lounging on the safety railing surrounding the center console. The Doctor ran up the catwalk and embraced Faith who was grinning from ear to ear.

"I told you I wouldn't let you go this alone," Faith reminded him of her promise. Faith pulled him into a tighter embrace and kissed him passionately. The Doctor broke free, his manic energy fully restored.

"All right, Faith, where do you want to go? Your choice…anywhere in the Universe…forwards or backwards in time…anywhere…" the Doctor asked, as he manipulated the controls, prepping the TARDIS for Vortex flight.

Faith walked up behind him and put her arms around his waist. "I don't care. Just as long as I can have you all to myself for about a week," she said.

The Doctor thought for a moment and laid in the coordinates. He threw the last lever and the TARDIS dematerialized and slipped into the Vortex. It was only then the TARDIS reminded him of a small detail he had overlooked. "WHAT?" the Doctor yelled.

Giles and the others heard the odd noises of the TARDIS and watched it fade in and out of sight until it finally vanished. Bambera took his arm and smiled knowingly at his amazed look. "You never quite get used to his comings and goings," she told Giles.

"I would hope not," Giles responded. He suddenly turned his head from side to side, looking at the people who had assembled to see the Doctor off. Buffy had spread the news that Faith had asked Spike to tell everyone goodbye for her. Giles took out his glasses and tapped his mouth with them. "I have the oddest feeling we are missing someone," he said. He counted again. "No…everyone I care about, plus Spike, is here, I must be wrong," Giles said.

Inside one of the bedrooms in the TARDIS, Andrew knocked once again on the still locked door. "Come on guys let me out, please. I promise I won't call the Doctor my Han Solo again. Please let me out. Guys…guys…is there anyone out there," he asked, banging on the door.

**Epilogue**

It was a cold night and Caleb staggered through the desert outside of Sunnydale. He had barely made it out of the caverns before they had collapsed. He was covered in small scrapes and cuts, his left ankle was sprained, but he was alive. Caleb looked up and saw that he had reached a small farm and the lights were on inside. He straightened his priestly collar and made his way to the front door.

Caleb rang the doorbell several times, but no one answered. He entered, knowing that people were more than likely not going to shoot a priest if they found one in their home. The house was quiet except for a TV that was going in the dining room. Caleb made his way cautiously to the dining room.

In the dining room, Caleb found the TV in a corner, playing a video tape of the Teletubbies. A man was hunched over the table eating. He was dressed all in black and was wearing a black hoodie. "Hello, sir, my name is Father Caleb. Your front door was open and I came in looking for some help," Caleb said. The man didn't respond, only kept eating. Caleb took a step sideways and looked at the "food" on the plates in front of the man at the table. On one plate was a chicken, its head ripped off and the feathers still attached. The other plate held a human foot and shin. Judging from the lack of decay, it had been on its owner less than a day ago.

The man in the hoodie wiped his mouth with a napkin and turned to face Caleb. "You know, they are completely wrong. Humans taste nothing at all like chickens," he said in what sounded like a British accent. The man pushed back his hoodie, revealing that he looked to be mid-30s with short brown hair that recently had the tips frosted blonde.

"Never tried it myself," Caleb said. He looked at the man closely. Something about him rang a bell. "I'm sorry have we met before?" Caleb asked.

"Why don't you recognize me? It's me, The Master," the Master said.

"Sorry, couldn't really tell, what with the whole…" Caleb made a circle around his own face with his finger.

"Ah yes…it's good to have a face that won't send the ladies running, once again. Of course it would be nice to be able to use mirror, but I'm working on that," the Master said. The Master stood slowly. "Yes Caleb, I have been restored to almost my full glory while you…you have fallen a great deal. You know what you are now, don't you?" the Master asked.

Caleb clenched his jaw in humiliation. He knew that without the First's backing, he was no match for the ancient vampire. He had no idea the ancient vampire was also an alien as well. "Yes sir. I'm your bitch," Caleb said submissively.

"Err…I don't swing that way, so no…that isn't what I was going to say. What I was going to say is…now you are simply…dessert," the Master said happily. He put on his vampire game face, the ridges forming over his forehead and his fangs showing. The Master leapt forward, grabbing Caleb in a deadly embrace. He pulled Caleb's head to one side, exposing the neck. Caleb's scream was cut short as the Master severed his jugular and drank deeply of his life's blood.

The Master let Caleb's lifeless body drop to the floor where he kicked it under the table to join the rest of the residents of the house. Picking up the remote for the TV, the Master sat back down at the table and propped his feet up on the edge. The Master gave a deep belly laugh as Tinky-Winky fell down and made a farting noise.

The End

Author's Note: keep an eye out for the next story in the Doctor's Faith series, "The Angel Has the Phone Box"; coming soon in the Doctor Who / Angel crossover section.


	8. Supplemental

For those of you interested, I have put together an audio version of this story. You can download the story at "duckwriter [dot] me".

Thanks for being loyal readers.

Patrick Mallard


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